


From Dusk to Dusk (we do it together)

by shuunin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Age Differences, Angst for days, Eventual Smut, Multi, PTSD Shiro, Slow Build, Zombie AU, agender/asexual pidge, development of mental health issues in individual characters, hunk wants to throw up all the time, slight mention of shmatt, this is a fucking shitstorm guys, um
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-07 01:18:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10349190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuunin/pseuds/shuunin
Summary: Zombies were the last thing on Keith's mind when he found out Shiro was missing. After learning about a hazardous break out from a crappy radio, Keith decides to pack his bags and search for the only person he could call family. As skillful as his foreshadowing ability might be, he hasn't the slightest idea of what lies ahead of him on his journey.





	1. no turning back

**Author's Note:**

> the only excuse i have for this fic is that i binge watched four and a half seasons of the walking dead in two nights. and then, i ate spaghetti with too much tomato sauce (you can imagine how that went jesus fuck). this fic does not in any way shape or form follow the walking dead plot, it's literally just a zombie plot i pulled out of my asshole. first fic too so YIKES
> 
> i end this note with a forwarded apology.
> 
> ***I MIGHT CHANGE THE ARCHIVE WARNINGS/ADD WARNINGS AS THIS FIC GOES SO PLEASE PAY ATTENTION FOR ANY TRIGGERING OR UPSETTING CONTENT***

Keith had a peculiar natural ability to expect the unexpected. Several years of living in the desert with Shiro did not accentuate that particular skill within him, but any time he actually needed it, it would surface from within him and make itself useful. Shiro called it instinct, but Keith’s foreshadowing ability was something akin to a superpower.

 

This was proven when, after Shiro telling him he’d be back in three days time, Keith had the gut feeling that Shiro would not return in the allotted time. Although he knew it was coming, he was still not prepared for the emotional turmoil he would suffer after three weeks passed and there was still no sign of him. Two days into the fourth week, Keith had not slept or eaten for five days straight. He threw up bile ever so often, and he knew he had to down something if he didn’t want his throat to disintegrate from the burn of his stomach acid. Usually, when Shiro would take longer in his trips to the outside world, Keith wouldn’t be so off kilter. He could handle himself, he knew how to take care of himself and their little cabin for as long as he needed to. But there was something horrible that was suppressing his homeostasis. This foreshadowing ability was telling him something _very_ very bad was happening, but it was greater than Shiro’s sole existence. Within itself, Shiro’s existence was eternally important to Keith: he was like an older brother, the only possible human being Keith could actually call family. So when his gut was tearing itself apart inside him, Keith could only know that it was something much bigger than themselves.

 For the following two days, Keith would sit on Shiro’s bed and stare at their maps pinned to a blackboard on the wall. They were thematic maps of the population distribution and geographical depictions of countries within a couple thousand miles from where they were. There were orthophoto maps surrounding those of the four closest cities to them as well, to help Shiro in his travelling. He kept feeling that dreadful tug at his gut, and he’d tried to do everything to distract himself from it, but it wouldn’t let up. So instead he was tracking possible places of Shiro’s dwelling and trying to figure out what the hell was pestering him so much. It was then Keith realized that they had a crappy radio sitting on a shelf, and if it would do anything to ease his weary, he was finally going to fix that damn thing.

 It took a lot of effort, but somehow Keith managed to get it to turn on. He was of course, greeted by the annoying noise of static as he searched for a working station. There was nothing he could properly catch on to, and if that was supposed to help his anxiety, it definitely didn’t. He kept trying, for hours he would switch from station to station, continuously finding himself accompanied by the same white noise.

 “Oh what the fuck!” He shoved the radio to the far side of the table, and stood up angrily, stomping to the pantry to find some stupid food even though he knew it wouldn’t help how nauseated he felt at the moment.

 He was three chips in a cylinder of sour cream pringles when the static on the radio began to waver. Keith rushed to the radio and sat by it.

 “-Breaking news, the facilities have failed- decontamina--- high chance of infection--- Barricade y-.”

 Keith’s gut twists painfully. Infection? Decontamination? He listened on for more.

 “----not safe----” and then the radio gave in to the static again. Keith tapped the radio a few times, but he had the feeling that the signal wasn’t lost on his end. His blood has run cold, he feels sweat gather on his palms and his breathing goes shallow. There’s no way that something like this could be happening. Now all he can think about is how long it had been going on before Shiro left, if Shiro was okay, and where the hell he went off to and didn't come back immediately after finding out about this… thing.

 The way things were now, Keith was only left with one choice. He had to look for Shiro, with how bad it sounded, the station couldn't have been more than two cities away. Shiro was somewhere in the city, and Keith was no stranger to traveling alone.

  _“I’m going to the south edge of Clara, and maybe up to Maden. It’s about a thirty mile walk north from here. I won’t take more than three days tops to go and come back.”_

  _“What do I do if you don’t come back?”_

  _“I will. You stay here until I do.”_

 Keith slammed the door of the cabin shut and locked it. Slipping the key into his pocket, he adjusted his black backpack over his shoulder and started his jog towards Clara City. A million things were running around in circles in his head, he couldn’t focus on any one thought at a time, all he knew was that he had one goal in mind, and that was to find and rescue Shiro wherever the hell he might be. The blaring sun was high in the sky, setting its searing gaze on Keith as he jogged across the barren land. To Keith dehydration was almost optional, living so long in the desert of Cema made his body’s ability to retain water stronger than the average individual.

 Once he reached the city limits, he immediately felt an ominous change in the atmosphere. The buildings were hardly intact from this outer edge, he can't even begin to imagine what it must be like at the core of the city. Everything was falling into place the exact way he knew it would go, and although he's not entirely surprised, he’s still swimming in a wave of shock.

 “An actual zombie break out, of all the crazy shit that could happen.” Keith told himself as the walked across the littered streets. There were abandoned cars lined up along the sidewalk, trash bins tipped over at every corner. For now, it seemed like there was only struggle in the city, like a migration of people away from the city limits. There was no sign of life, not even blood to signify some kind of devastation. It was in this moment Keith realized he had no idea where he should start his search for Shiro. He could have gone anywhere at this point. His luckiest guess would be that this city was freshly abandoned before he got to it, and instead of coming back he followed their migration trail. With the wind having blown every piece of trash that could've pointed Keith in a general direction, it was clear that he would have to take another shot at luck.

 Five miles into the city, Keith hears the first sign of life. His trained ear listens in on the frightened scuffle of footsteps behind a series of cars to his left. He draws a knife from the straps across his thigh and unnoticeably slows his steps. The pair of feet tiptoe in a futile attempt to be sneaky, because Keith knows exactly where they are.

 A breath. Two. The feet dig into the concrete and propel themselves forward, in that instant Keith turns around, knife ready to be thrown when he realizes the person running is a literal twelve year old with messy dirty blonde hair. He couldn't bring himself to throw the knife, so instead he resorts to chasing them down the empty road. “Hey! You! Stop!”

 The kid squeaks like a frightened mouse, and picks up the pace. For a small child, they sure can _run_. Keith overpowers his step, and soon he's right at their heels. “I said stop! Stop running goddammit!”

 Keith grabs the back of their shirt and then they're tumbling across the asphalt until the kid is only a featherweight over his chest. They’re  wearing cargo shorts, and their knees are littered with cuts and bruises, dusted over with dirt from what seems like a long journey. Their shoes were once white, now only a ghost of the eggshell hue peeks forth from a sea of dirt brown. Looking at their face, Keith sees dirty round rimmed glasses, a reddened button nose and frightened honey hued eyes. Keith grabs them by the shirt as they both struggle to stand.

 “Listen, stop trying to run, I'm not gonna hurt you. I need to know what the hell happened here.”

 The kid looked around meaningfully, then turned their eyes back to Keith, they looked dubious as to whether Keith was asking a serious question. “Can't you see what's happened already?”

Keith tears his eyes away from them and drinks in the absolute shit hole they're standing in the middle of. Here shop windows have been shattered, doors broken and the trash has increased in volume tenfold. The smell of disease and garbage in the air has thickened, some cars have been broken into, the only way Keith could describe such a horrific seen is absolute, relentless anarchy. The magnitude of the situation threatens to weigh on him, but he straightens up and looks back at his hostage.

 Keith tries again. “Do you know where everyone went?”

 “If I knew that, then I wouldn't be standing here.”

 Something about the way they were looking at him made him _know_ that they were lying through their damn teeth. How much harder can this get?

 “What's your name?”

 The kid goes ramrod, and their eyes dart in every direction, “I'm Sunny. Like the sun, but with an extra _n_ and a y.”

 “You're lying to me. Look, I know that I haven't given you any reasons to trust me. Hell, I almost threw a knife at you. But I really need your help. I'm looking for someone.”

 “Aren't we all?”

 Keith raises a tentative eyebrow, “Who are you looking for?”

 Big honeycomb eyes narrow, and thin lips pull into a frown. “As my captor, I refuse to get personal with you.”

 Keith pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “I'll let you go if you just tell me what you know.”

 Their eyes are calculating, searching for any signs of a lie. Keith tries to put his best face forward, hoping that he doesn’t seem suspicious.

 After what seems like forever, they finally speak. “My actual name is Pidge, and if you let go of my shirt, I might tell you what I know.”

Keith releases Pidge at once, they dust themselves off and turn around in the initial direction they were running towards. “Follow me.” 


	2. what lies ahead

The walk with Pidge is asphyxiating. Now at the heart of the city, Pidge had said they were going to the north far side of Clara, where they have a small base with another person. They walk on their toes, as if ready to bolt in a moments notice. Keith has to level with that kind of anxiety, and he quickly realizes he's adjusting to the constant thrum of adrenaline that makes his veins pulsate in his body.

“I don't think I told you my name. I'm-”

“Shh!” Pidge scolds, “Don't try to make conversation this far out. It's dangerous.”

Keith closes his mouth. No hard feelings.

They round the corner of a building onto a new street when Pidge reaches out and pulls Keith back under the shadows. “Shit, there's Crawlers. We can't go that way.”

The adrenaline that has been hiding under Keith's skin bubbles to the surface. Pidge looks at him and points to their mouth, making a zipper motion to communicate that they need to be as quiet as possible. They stretch their hand out and point to the far end of the street. So they're gonna cross to the other side and go from there. Keith nods in understanding.

Pidge pulls him in close to whisper, “If you haven't seen them before, don't look. Just run.”  Another nod, and then Pidge is signaling a countdown. Three. Two. One. And they pick themselves up and bolt across the street.

Now, Keith was good at hearing, but he was _terrible_ at listening. When Pidge said don't look, he tried his hardest to keep his eyes ahead, but he stole a glance at his first real zombie, and the horrendous sight of such a vile creature almost made his bones jump out of his skin.

He managed to keep himself upright until they reached the end of the block. Then he wobbled over and collapsed to his knees. The wind was knocked out of him, because he realized the stench in the city wasn't the trash that littered the streets they walked on. It was the smell of decomposing corpses. Still in the early stages, but it was nonetheless a nauseating experience. It would doubtlessly take a while for him to get used to the reality that _this is actually happening Shiro is running around god knows where in this hell of a w-_

 _“_ Oh my god. Oh. My god. We are gonna die it's over this is it-” Pidge’s mantra like rambling snapped Keith out of his trance.

“What?”

“I don't know how they managed to make it here in less than two hours. But they're everywhere. Everywhere. Oh my god.”

Keith was afraid to look, but the way Pidge was freaking out meant it must be really bad. He pressed his back to the building and poked his head out, seeing that a horde of those things filled the street they were trying to walk through. Keith looks back at Pidge, who is now knelt on the ground with their head between their thighs, breaths heaving out in a panic. Keith kneels down to their level and pulls them up to look at him.

“Pidge, listen to me. We aren't going to die. Tell me how they work, I can get us past them.”

“They're, they're _dangerous.”_ Pidge is visibly trembling. “You can't let them bite or scratch you. And the only way you can kill them is if you aim for their brain stem.”

“The backs of their necks?”

Pidge nods. “Nothing else will kill them.”

Thinking about it now, Keith will probably not be able to land a kill. He's never even considered raising his sword against someone, or anything for that matter. The fear overpowered the adrenaline in his system, he had to think of something _fast_ or else he'd be left with no choice but to fight a battle he knows he's not ready for.

He looks back again, and finds it odd that the north is only barely beginning to fill up with zombies. The street behind them is completely empty, with only trash and a few cars li-

Cars. _Cars._

“Pidge, how old are you?”

Pidge looks up at Keith. “Fifteen.”

“We are going to break the law for a bit.” Keith stands up and motions for Pidge to follow. “Come, help me break into that car.” He points out into the first car across the empty street. It's a black Nissan Altima, the coat is shiny as if it was just bought. They'll have to make do.

Pidge’s face contorts into pure horror. “You can't be serious! That'll make it so much worse! We’ll lead the horde straight into our base!”

“How many of you are there?”

“Only one other, but we have supplies! Maps, systems, food, weapons. We’ll lose everything!”

“Do you trust me?”

“Hell no I don't! I'm not even obligated to help you, you're going to ruin everything we've worked for- no, no-”

“Pidge, this is our only shot at surviving. Can you communicate with your partner from here?”

“No I- wait. I have a walkie talkie.”

“So this is the plan. We open the hood of the car and disconnect the wires that raise alarm, then we break into the car and turn it on from the inside. You call your friend on the walkie talkie to pack all your stuff and be ready to jump into the car. I've got a cabin out in the desert, I'll drive us back there and then we can take it from there.”

Pidge looks doubtful for a moment. “Have you ever even driven before? You look fairly young.”

“I once owned a motorcycle.”

Pidge rolls their eyes. “That doesn't make me feel any safer. But fine, I will do as you ask.”

They crawl silently to the hood of the Nissan Sentra and carefully open it. Upon Keith’s inspection, he looks over to Pidge and takes a breath “So, do you know anything about cars?”

Pidge raises their eyebrows at him, nudge their glasses close to their face and sighs “Hold the hood, I know how they work.”

Keith watches them go to work on the engine, and all the while they're spewing mechanical talk about how you're supposed to pull a specific chord, pay attention to the colors. Again, Keith was good at hearing, not listening.

“Where'd you learn this stuff anyway?”

The question makes Pidge stiffen. “You know what, does that even matter? Because I don't think it matters-” they nervously pull on something in the car and the sirens blare out like a fucking mating call.

If they weren't in deep shit before, they definitely were now.

It doesn't take more than three seconds for Pidge to pull their shit together and actually cut the right chord. But the damage has been done, Keith looks back and the god awful crawlers have already begun to close in on them.

He thanks whatever god there is that the windows were half open because all he has to do is hoist Pidge up to slip their small hands inside and unlock the car, and then they're both inside. Keith shoves his backpack and sword to the back seat, and starts to kick at the plastic under the steering wheel.  They still have time, the crawlers have only just crossed the street now.

“Pidge,” Keith grabs their cheeks and forces them to look at him. Tears are gathering at the edges of their honey colored eyes, Keith has to try his best to get them back from their scare. “Don't look ahead, just focus on turning the car on. Are you listening to me? Don't pay attention to them. They're not close. We have time.”

Pidge nods through their tears. They only need a few seconds to connect the two wires, but breaking through the plastic shield was hard. Keith sort of lied, because the crawlers were now just feet away from them, but Pidge can focus better if they're oblivious to the danger. They're slurring wet apologies over and over as they fumble over the wires, their fingers trembling.

Sure enough, the car sparks to life. Keith steps on the gas just as a crawler presses itself to Pidge’s door.

“Where to?”

“El-Elizabeth street, three blocks to the right it’s- it's a place with metal blinds.” Pidge’s eyes are darting every which way they can, the terror building up as more and more crawlers appear. “Oh, oh no, I've never seen this many.”

Keith reaches over the steering wheel and nudges Pidge’s arm softly, “Get your friend on the walkie talkie.”

Pidge reaches into their cargo shorts and pulls out a black block. They press the button to talk, “Hunk, are you there?”

They wait an agonizing amount of time, Pidge can hardly hold the walkie talkie in their hands from how badly they're sweating.

“I'm here, copy.”

“Hunk. I need you to pack everything we have. The city is becoming infested. Pack everything, do you hear me? Everything.”

“Copy that. Um, where exactly are we gonna go?”

“Just be ready to jump into a car, do not open the blinds until I tell you to.”

The reply takes longer to come in, “Copy.”

Pidge puts the walkie talkie down and looks ahead, “We are about three blocks away from the turn.”

Keith reaches over and turns the radio on. When Pidge notices he struggles to sort through the stations, they take over. “----cities are-- consumed- whole” it takes a while for them to find a proper station, but eventually one comes in that's at least half decent.

_Reports are coming in of entire cities falling to the infection. As late as last week the infection spread across the country. Things are looking grim as now the first military base has fallen, and the government is grappling to stay intact._

Keith’s gut does a somersault in his body, and his heart sinks to the floor. Pidge looks equally devastated, their face losing all color and lips going purple at the dark news.

“See if you can find anything about the infection.”

Instead, Pidge shuts the radio off. “I can tell you about that, your right turn is here- Jesus Christ! There's so many!” The hordes of crawlers have become more and more dense, Keith is beginning to worry just how they plan to get Hunk into the car.

Pidge once again turns on their walkie talkie “Hunk, we are two blocks away, hurry up, they're coming in by the double digits now!” They crawl to the back seat and unlock it, pushing Keith's belongings to one side.

Keith recognizes the building from Pidge’s description. It's a rundown place with tight security, probably enough to ward off a small horde of crawlers, but it was evident that they've never faced numbers like this before.

“ Get out! Now!” Pidge yells into the walkie talkie.

There was just enough clearing to make a small stop, and Keith looked around to make sure that none of the crawlers were too close. The poor bastards, they each had achieved a different level of decomposing, but they all had the telltale greying skin of a rotting corpse, some were mauled beyond recognition, their skins just barely clinging to their bones. Up close and personal, Keith understood the terror depicted in the movies, why despite such sluggish movement, they were so dangerous.

It took a whole minute for the metal blinds to come up noisily, drawing attention from nearby crawlers. They started a fast walk towards them, and said Hunk came out running with bags filled to the brim. Most were food, but about three held weapons and other important information. Pidge crawled back to the front seat, seeing as Hunk was going to need all the space he could get. He manages to close the door as a crawler reached for him, and Keith had to run over a couple before the path was cleared.

“I honestly thought I was going to die today. What kind of store has food that's been expired for over a year?!”

Pidge is more visibly relaxed now that Hunk is with them, safe and complaining about food. “Hunk, I think that that should be the least of our worries right now.”

“Yeah, the least of _your_ worries. Who is this by the way? Hi, I'm Hunk. I don't think we've properly met?”

Keith looks at him from the rearview mirror. “Keith. Funny, you learn my name at the same time as Pidge.”

“Yeah, Pidge tends to not want to know the names of people. Especially not someone as cute as you.”

Pidge jolts in their seat, face red. “Hunk! Now is not the time for your jokes!”

Keith grins smugly at Pidge enough time for them to catch it. Pidge looks completely attacked, “You're going along with it! You fiends! I can't believe this.”

After a hearty laugh, the car settles into a less tense silence. Keith looks over at Pidge, “You said you were going to tell me about the crawlers.”

“Yeah well that was before you pulled a dirty joke on me. Now I won't tell.” Pidge pouts, crosses their arms and stares out the window.

“Alright, I digress. Can you please tell me what you know? You're a pretty smart person.”

Pidge gives him a judgemental glance before sighing and letting their arms go. “They're almost like your typical zombie horror story.”

“Hm?”

“Yeah,” Hunk pipes in, “They're ugly and they smell gross.”

Keith nods “I can see that. What else is there?”

Pidge struggles to speak. They clear their throat, “They uh, they were once functioning people. The infection is mostly passed through the exchange of fluids, but it is also airborne. As soon as you breathe the air- it's what I've gathered. Um, the people, when they die, their bodies stop functioning. This virus targets the brain stem, multiplies and multiplies, they manipulate the function of neurons in the brain stem. So the only thing that comes back to life is the body. There's no emotion, no, uh, no more human qualities. The virus doesn't stop the body from decomposing, since the brain stem only allows the body to move, not function. They shift to beastly instincts with only one goal in mind, to eat.”

“You said the infection starts when you breathe in the air. Does that mean we are infected?”

“We are, but this virus can only kickstarts when all the other cells in our body stop working. In other words-”

“You have to die.”

“Correct. It multiplies in our nervous system when our biological functions have ceased. As for their behavior, I would observe the few that would come and go from the roof of our base. I noticed that they react to sound, or vibrations in the ground. They also have a sense of smell, I figure that's the only way they haven't eaten each other. They are blind, because they've run into the light posts and mailboxes as they walk around.”

Keith considers asking how Pidge attains all this knowledge, but the last time he asked that they freaked out. He holds his tongue.

“Wow.” Hunk says between a mouthful of chips. “I knew about, one third of all of that. How do you know all of this Pidge?”

Keith is about ready to dig Hunk’s grave.

Thankfully, Pidge resorts to not answering.

“Woah, are we in the desert?” Hunk asks, looking out the window. By this point they've crossed the city limits and transitioned into the barren land ahead.  “Man, just looking at it makes me thirsty.”

“Mhm.” Keith confirms, “We're going to my cabin.- he interrupts Hunks obvious question- Don't worry, it's air conditioned,- ‘buh’-and yes, there's water dispensers.”

“How long have you lived out here?” Pidge asks. The sun was setting behind a set of burnt orange hills, making the ground look like volcanic rock. This was Keith's favorite time of day, when he and Shiro would pick up a few things and make some sandwiches to sit out on a hill when the weather was just right for a good two hours. The warmth was leaving and the cold of night was beginning to settle in, and that little window of time was a perfect mixture of both extremities.

Keith smiles at the fond memories, “Since I turned ten, I was uh, taken in.”

“Taken in?”

Keith shakes his head, “That's a story for another time. For now, we're just gonna set up over at my place. I don't think the crawlers can make it out here in one piece.”

Pidge is looking out the window in wonder. “Yeah, hopefully.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posted this cause my last chap was just a 1.7k word intro. real shit starts next chapter so, stay tuned! ill probably be doing bi-weekly updates cause im a huge ass procrastinator for school work and any three day weekend my school gives me u will probably be seeing double updates. 
> 
> thank u and byyyye


	3. when i need the suns heat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to clarify on ages:  
> hunk - 21  
> keith- 18  
> pidge- 15
> 
> also there is a slight reference to gender dysphoria/gender phobia in this chapter so pls be aware.

Disappointment seeps into Keith's skin like self injected poison. No matter how hard he had worked mentally and emotionally to prepare against it, it still infiltrated him with the same vigor, the same mercy. He really shouldn't have expected Shiro to suddenly turn up while he was gone on his little exhibition, but you don't get to choose false hope, false hope chooses you. 

 

He parks just outside the front porch of the cabin. It's a quaint little rattled cabin, the wood is old with age but all the same sturdy. It was exactly the kind of place that fit Shiro's personality. With the help of him and Keith, they were able to make a lot of functioning systems inside it. Hunk squirms his way out of the backseat and humbles something about unloading. Pidge is still seated on the passenger's seat with their hands on their lap, eyes trained on their fingernails. Keith pulls on the wires to turn the car off, and unlocks the doors. 

 

“You coming?” Keith asks with his hand on the door.

 

Pidge swallows, they meet Keith's expectant gaze. “Thank you, for saving us back there, and, I'm sorry for doubting you.” 

 

“You had every reason to, if you want, we can wait to talk tomorrow morning. Today was a long day.”

 

Pidge nods, opening the door and slipping out to help Hunk with the bags in the backseat. Keith opens the opposite door and pulls out his sword and backpack. He looks at the blade for a little too long, imagining the blood that would most likely stain the virgin metal. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. 

 

He hears Pidge struggling to climb the series of steps that lead to the doorway of the cabin, and rushes over just as the huge heavy bag of mechanics topples over from their arms. Keith barely caught the bag on time and took it from Pidges arms with one hand. “I've got this one.”

 

Pidge stares in disbelief for a moment, and then snaps back as soon as they left. They push up their glasses to the bridge of their nose and take a deep breath, “That's all the stuff I created together with Hunk to help gather information on neighboring cities.” 

 

“I have a table inside, think you could use it?” 

 

Pidge pinches their chin. “Is your roof stable?”

 

Hunk crawls out of the cabin with a delighted look on his face, “You have a functioning kitchen?!” 

 

Keith grins.

 

“Jesus it's cold up here. This is why I've always hated deserts.” Pidge cuddles into the blanket Keith had brought them, typing away at a small device. They're both sitting on the flat roof of Keith's cabin, accompanied by a waxing crescent moon and a royal blue cloudless sky. 

 

“Can't get a better view of the sky though.” Keith defends. Pidge looks up and hums in awed acquiescence. The dark blue sky is painted with bright sea green spots by clusters of stars and other light emitting objects in space. It almost feels like they can touch it with a stretch of their hand. 

 

The cold seeps into their skin again, ringing reality back in their ears. “Doesn't take away the fact that it's still cold.” 

 

Keith is munching on a small snack bar Hunk handmade in the kitchen and delivered  up to them. They've got food to last them at least a month and a half, but all things considered, they should probably go scavenging for some more. Keith doesn't like the sound of that word, and wills it out of his mind. 

 

“You get used to it after the third or fourth year living here.” He tells them, trying to lean over and see what they're doing. Pidge is holding a grudge because all Keith is wearing is a black t shirt and some jeans outside in like, ten degree weather.

 

“Well lucky me I don't plan to live here for any longer than a month.” Pidge bites, shivering in the blanket. 

 

“You do remember that I said we could wait on all this tomorrow?”

 

“Tomorrow when it's a thousand degrees out? Sorry, but I prefer the cold to the hot any day. And if I had a choice, I would prefer the perfect room temperature where I can soundly dwell in my own existence.”

 

Keith chuckles at that. “I guess I'll just stay here and accompany you. What is all that stuff anyway?” 

 

“They're programmed radars Hunk and I use to keep track of horde density. We use this- Pidge holds out the little black screen for Keith to see, it's like a small pulse system that sends frequencies out and manifest bright dots- to find out where the hordes are and approximate how many there are.”

 

“Aren’t radars used to detect planes?”

 

“Yeah, that's why we programmed it to detect masses that have the virus by using samples from the dead outside our old base. There's interruptions in the signal sometimes, and we pick up false data too often to prove any statistical significance, but beggars can't be choosers.”

 

“Aren't we all infected?” 

 

“Exactly, that's why we are only guessing that all these hordes are actually crawlers. They could be alive, they could be dead, I haven't figured out a way to separate the two. This is just a draft device. But it sure as hell beats going at it blindly.”

 

“I guess you're right.” Keith shrugs. “How far can you send the signal?”

 

“Within a 100 mile radius give or take, can you hand me that bag?”

 

Keith reaches behind him and drags the black bag across the roof to Pidge. They look like a frightened squirrel as they momentarily drop the blanket to quickly dig out a series of maps, pens and a small thick laptop with a little handmade satellite attached to it. Pidge hands Keith a relatively large red flashlight, almost big enough to be a beacon. “Flash some light over me? I'd like to sketch out what we're looking at here.” 

 

Keith does as he's asked. He watches Pidge connect the sonar to the mini satellite computer. “So this, will send the signal out up to 300 miles. I should be able to track crawler activity here in.. a second.” Pidge busies themselves with spreading maps of the cities, they were also orthophoto, almost exactly like the ones pinned on Keith's board inside.

 

“Just how in the hell did you  _ build  _ all this? How did you program it?”

 

“The only good thing about a zombie apocalypse is the fact that stores like Best Buy and Radioshack are open twenty four hours.” Pidge takes a second to think, then adds, “Oh, and the stuff is free.” 

 

A fit of laughter erupts from Keith, and Pidge only half smiles at that. “Anyway, most of this stuff is from computer parts, some consoles, televisions and what not, the really expensive looking equipment we jacked from an airplane we used to hang out in at the airport west from Clara. We tried using every part, but the plastic didn't really help much.”

 

Keith hums in acknowledgement, and they settle into a comfortable silence.

 

Pidge types away at the small computer. Only then does Keith really get to see every detail in Pidge’s complexion. The dim flicker of the off white screen light allows him to see the soft shape of their jaw, the tiniest hint of freckles dusted over their petite reddened nose. Eyelashes flutter against their round glasses and tiny lips are drawn to a pout. Pidge almost passes as a-

 

“Are you a girl?” Keith meant to phrase that differently, shit, he wasn’t even supposed to say it to begin with, what was  _ wrong _ with him.

 

Pidge straightens their back from slouching over the small screen to fully look at Keith. Their face shows a mixture of confusion and a swarm of other suppressed emotions. “What is it with you and personal questions?”

 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask, I just got a good look at your face and-”

 

“Shut up.” Pidge deadpans, then after scrutinizing Keith’s _genuinely_ guilty face they sigh. “Biologically, I was born a girl. Didn’t really fit the description, I guess, I wasn’t _right_ in my own skin. So I identify as agender. Do you have any other probing questions?”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“That’s not a question.”

 

Silence.

 

“Okay, then let me ask  _ you  _ a question. What were you doing in the city?”

 

Keith inhales. There's a dull ache in his chest, as if Pidge were poking at a freshly formed scab. “I was looking for someone.”

 

“Yeah, I got that, but who specifically?” 

 

“I thought you didn't want to get personal.” Keith says, arching a suspicious brow.

 

“Well seeing as we are bound to spend more time together as a team, I figure we might as well get to know each other's situation.” Pidge begins to scribble on a map as they look back and forth between the screen and the paper. 

 

Keith gathers his internal self. He realizes now how truly difficult it is to open up to people who aren’t his missing family. “His name is Shiro. We aren't related by blood, but he's been the only person I was close to since my childhood. He went missing three or four weeks ago, and I was looking for him when I bumped into you.” 

 

Pidge is shuffling through some maps, marking what seems to be the most dense parts of the cities. Keith doesn’t miss the tiny window of time where Pidge’s eyes glistened with familiarity at the sound of Shiro’s name, “So you thought you would be successful just running around with a sword and a couple of knives?” 

 

Keith scratches the back of his neck, a sheepish blush dusted over his cheeks. Yeah, maybe that wasn't the best call.

 

Hunk calls from the porch. “Hey guys?!” Keith leans over the roof to look at him while Pidge finishes up the last marks and rolls the maps up, tucking them under their arm. “I know you're probably in some deep conversation right now but I just made dinner!” 

 

Keith and Pidge look at each other. 

 

“Alright so,” Hunk slides each of them a plate on the table while Keith handles the drinks and Pidge the cutlery. “I found a couple of useful spices in your cabinets, coupled with rice I had and some chicken I found in your freezer, I think you guys are in for a treat.”

 

Keith sits down across from Hunk, while Pidge takes a seat to the end of the table next to them both, “Hunk, you really outdid yourself. It's close to 11pm.” he says, it's not so much a complaint as it is an observation. He isn't really hungry, but if Hunk made it, he may as well try to eat. 

 

“Yeah, and when was the last time either of you ate? I know what I'm doing, besides, it eases my mind a bit to cook.” Hunk defends, then he points at Keith's plate with his fork “Eat.”

 

Pidge doesn't need to be told twice. They're digging in and complimenting Hunk with each bite of Hunk’s delectable platter. 

 

Keith is a little slower at eating. It's definitely delicious, much better than anything he's able to whip up, as he's not much for cooking as he is for microwaved macaroni and ramen. He decides to try and strike up some conversation.

 

“So, how did you two end up together?” Keith begins

 

The question seems to raise some tension. Pidge slows their chewing, and Hunk sort of looks up at him like a kicked animal. Way to ruin the mood, Keith.

 

“We uh-” Hunk wipes his mouth with a paper towel. “We got separated from our group.”

 

_ The sirens howls of distress bounce off the sterile white walls in the biochemical laboratory facility. Inside, panicked scientists, researchers, engineers and medics are being escorted by security guards who hide their fear in the shirt pockets of their uniforms.  _

 

_ Matt Holt takes his little sister's hand and shoves them under a metal desk inside one of the labs, pressing a finger to his mouth in a hushing motion. “Don't move from here Katie, I'll come back in a minute.” He was putting on his bravest face for them, but Katie was an intelligent kid, and they could easily see past his thin veil of valor.  _

 

_ Matt shouldn't have been surprised to find that Katie was no longer under the desk he had put them. As an inquisitive child, Katie hated having their questions unanswered, and right now they must've had a  _ lot  _ of questions. The laboratory is practically empty, fully evacuated from personnel as a robotic female voice repeated “Red alert, all personnel must evacuate immediately- all personnel must evacuate immediately “ _

 

_ Matt panics. “Katie! Where are you?!” He shouts, calling their name repeatedly as he ran from sterile room to sterile room.  _

 

_ Katie was just up ahead, trying to find anyone that could tell them just what the hell is going on. She runs into someone then, an idle scientist standing crookedly in front of a lab table inside a glass walled room. “Ah, there you are! Can you please tell me why everyone is running off?” _

 

_ There's no answer, only a subtle growl that Katie couldn't hear over the sound of the robotic voice in the intercom. Katie slows their steps, and tilts their head to try to see the man before he turned around. “Um, hello?” _

 

_ The body jerks. It's almost like it's lost its humanistic malleability, each move felt like it was programmed. Katie found that to be extremely discomforting, but when the staff member fully turned around, Katie screamed in pure, unfiltered terror.  _

 

_ Pieces of the scientists neck were gouged out by human shaped teeth marks, his irises were filmed over with a cloudy substance that indicated blindness, eyes rolled up like he was trying to look at his own brain. His skin was deathly pale, lips purple, cheeks sunk as his mouth hung open. His teeth, bottom lip and his chin were oozing blood that Katie didn't want to think belonged to someone else. _

 

_ They were completely frozen in their place as the infected scientist shuffled towards them. It was like a shock wave stiffened their limbs and held them there, forcing them to stare at the very epitome of an unleashed hell upon this world. _

 

_ The infected never even got to lunge himself at them. A metal pole struck him behind the head, and he crumpled to the floor in one fell swoop. A relatively large man stood where the perpetrator once did, breathing heavy and dark skin sweating. He had a hospital gown on, and his IV cords were torn out of his arm, head wrapped in bandages.  _

 

_ Katie takes a good look at him and their first question  happens to be “Hunk? Is that your IV pole? Did you just kill him with your IV pole?”  _

 

_ Hunk looks terrified, and his dark skin takes on a lighter shade at his fatigue. “Kill? No you see, I cracked my head open on the edge of a lab table three days ago. I'm pretty sure I'm experiencing a lucid dream right now, so technically speaking, no I didn't kill him.”  _

 

_ “No you ar- Hunk? You aren't dreaming. This is real.”  Katie says,  stepping over the fallen body to pinch his arm. The prickle definitely feels real, and Hunks head is murky, but at least he can make conscious decisions and see clearly. He just feels like he's underwater.  _

 

_ “Oh, shit.”  _

 

_ “Katie!” They hear Matt call from behind. He's running at them full speed, face reading nothing but horror. Maybe they should ask him what's going on. _

 

_ “Matt? Where's dad?”  _

 

_ Matt makes a full stop in front of Katie and the hospital gown guy, and puts his hands on his knees, chest heaving. “I'll explain everything later. But you need to get out of here. Hunk, take her with you, head south from here. South. The north facilities have all had an infestation of these  _ things. _ I will catch up to you later. They need me in the north.” He shrugs off his backpack and hands it to them “it's weapons, maps, and whatever food I could fit in there, you're going to need these to navigate through the next couple of weeks” Hunk takes the backpack, his aura has changed. He's much more serious, only a small hint of fear resonated in his oak irises. _

 

_ Katie's mouth fills with protests, but Hunk already has his arms around them, apologies spilling from his lips. They struggle against his grip, “No! No I'm not leaving you! Matt! You can't do this!”  _

 

_ Matt steps forward, and places a strong kiss to their forehead. They halt for a moment, looking up at him, round honey eyes silently pleading. Matt gives an equally apologetic look.  _

 

_ “I promise I'll come find you. I love you, Pidgie.”  Matt  says, ruffling their hair.  _

 

_ It was the first real moment that Matt had actually acknowledged Katie's gender. Two years of formerly coming out to their family and they had only received the minimum amount of support from their parents. Matt had never formulated a proper answer to them, and called them Pidgie sometimes to ease the tension. This only fueled their desperation more, they cried out as Hunk carried them away, past the double doors where their big brothers face grew more and more distant, more and more distorted, more helplessness that filled the growing space between them.  _

 

_ Katie was the type of person to let unsolved problems consume them whole. This situation that was out of their control, it made a permanent dread settle like the disgusting sludge of a septic tank deep in their gut. Hunk made things better, for the journey ahead, but there was this doubtless emptiness they felt in every waking moment.  _

 

The dishes were set to dry idly on the plastic rack next to the sink. Pidge had wiped down the table while Hunk and Keith took over the dishes. Oddly enough, after Hunk and Pidge told their story, a lot of of anxiety dissolved from the air they shared. Although Keith was reluctant to share his past, he felt a lot closer to the two despite spending such little time together. The story explained a lot about both of them; why they seemed to be the only two people left on the face of the planet, how they created such sophisticated technology from scratch. For him it took years to develop a proper relationship with Shiro, but maybe he had picked up a few things from spending so much time with such a warm hearted person. 

 

Pidge and Keith returned to the roof to finish marking down the last of the movements within the cities. When they returned Hunk was dozing off on a chair, his head wobbling with drowsiness and his mouth hanging open.

 

“Hunk, wake up.” Pidge shook his shoulders. He responded by snorting himself awake. 

 

“Huh wha- what's happening?” Hunk mumbles, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. 

 

“We have a plan for tomorrow.” Keith announces, spreading the maps of the two closest northern cities. “We are heading back north, everyone that we- he glances over at Hunk, troubled by the idea that maybe he has no one to look for, so he continues with caution- are looking for should be up there. If they're not in Maden, the hordes must have pushed them even further up.” 

 

“So the plan is to keep moving north?” Hunk asks.

 

Pidge nods, “We have to keep ourselves consistent. If we hit nothing by the time we reach Altea, the northern border of the country, we will come back the way we came and start over.” 

 

Hunk is immediately bothered. “There has to be millions of crawlers out there. Who knows if crawlers have crossed the province!  That's super dangerous. I don't agree. There's so much we can run into. And we are a tiny team, we're just three people! This is an absurd idea.” 

 

Keith figured Hunk wouldn't be so hot on agreeing with them. “You guys are innovators. We can think of something. Plus I may be impulsive, but my impulsiveness sometimes lands us in the right direction. Look at how I saved you with the car.”

 

Hunk narrows his eyes at Keith, “Are you listening to yourself? We can't rely on ‘sometimes’ like it's a shot in the dark. This is life and death we are talking about. And I don't know about you, but I want to live. And not just that, I have a responsibility to protect Pidge until we can find their brother again. I'm not putting them in that kind of danger.” 

 

“Hunk-” Pidge begins, but is promptly cut off by Hunk raising his hand to shush them.

 

“No, Pidge. You know sometimes I forget that you're so young. But with these rash decisions you're making, I see a reflection of your real age. I cannot support this unless you give me a real plan. Not just an idea.” 

 

Keith grits his teeth. Hunk was right, they did just have a vague idea of what they wanted to do. Again, the friction of their dispute rolled off their skin and made them tense. 

 

Keith rubs his face and sighs. “We will talk about this again tomorrow. Pidge, Hunk is right. We need an elaborate plan on how we are gonna travel north. But right now, I think what we need is rest.” 

 

There's a silent, resentful agreement lacking of a proper answer. Keith offers them both their own spot on his bunk bed. When Shiro and Keith shared it together, Keith would always call dibs on the top while Shiro gratefully took the bottom. Now Hunk lay nestled in Shiro’s blankets, the sight makes Keith feel a painful tug at his heartstrings. Pidge took the top bunk only after bickering with Keith that they could just take the couch, but Keith was persistent. After settling down and bidding a quiet goodnight, they closed their eyes and let their thoughts consume them.

 

Keith dreams of the crawlers he saw that day. Their tattered clothes, torn like their shriveled gray skin. Sunken eyes devoid of life and color, like filmy veins invading their once colored irises. Their mouths have mostly rotted off, and only dry blood littered their cracked, purple dry lips. Their teeth are a sickly yellow color, some have popped off to show the root of the gum, where rot has centered itself in the canal. But it wasn't the way they looked that terrified him, if anything their sight just churned his stomach and made him nauseous. What really scared him was the way they  _ moved _ , so slow and uncoordinated. They stumbled without meaning, and when they heard a sound, their stiff necks would make a sickening crack in the direction of the noise. 

 

There were a plethora of crawlers scattered about the empty space Keith stood in. Out of all of them, only one stood out to him the most. Broad shoulders in a torn once white  t-shirt, thinned out by time and stained with blood. The back of his head had a fading buzzcut, a frazzled black mop of black hair situated on top of it. He looked strikingly familiar from behind, and Keith had the desire for him to turn around so he can see the crawlers face, but at the same time there was a dread settling in his gut at the thought that there was a possibility that he might be-

 

A sputter came from his lips like the engine of a car wanting to live. He wanted to rid himself of such a nasty thought, but it seemed as though the effort presented itself physically. That single sound triggered the crawlers to turn his way.  _ Turning, turning, a snap of a neck, a crack of another, please don’t be it, please don’t be him- _

 

All other crawlers ignored, the one that Keith couldn’t take his eyes off turned so slowly that it was physically painful for him to witness. His chest ached from his thunderous heartbeat, his throat sealed itself and his stomach rolled in protest. The crawler finally focuses his attention on Keith, his white filmy eyes no longer the radiant chocolate he had grown to love. 

 

Sunken cheeks, an open eye socket, a broken jaw. Yellow teeth, black gums, and plastered messily over his forehead... was Shiro’s trademark silver of white hair. 

 

Keith screams.

 

“-eith! Hey, Keith! Wake up!” Keith wakes to Pidge kneeled beside him, shaking him out of his nightmare. He's instantly grateful, gulping for air as though he had been holding his breath the entire time he was dreaming. Their worried face comes into focus, elucidated only by the dim golden light the lamp in the corner of the room offered. Small shadows dipped over tired eyes and softly shaped cheek bones. 

 

“You were having a bad dream” they say softly, eyebrows knit in worry. Keith sits up, props an elbow on his leg and dips his face into his hand. Beads of sweat dot across his forehead, lips parched and pale. 

 

He looks at them, still dazed. “You’re not asleep?”   
  
“I’m a really light sleeper.” Pidge responds, standing up and sitting next to him. “You were moving around a lot and-” their next words catch in their throat. They swallow thickly, eyes moving to the corner of the room. “You were making a lot of noise too.”

 

He sighs, “I didn't think this whole situation would affect me so much.”

 

“It doesn't feel real, does it?” Pidge asks, but the question sounded rhetorical. “Listen, I've been thinking about what our plan could be, and I think I've come up with something.” 

 

Keith is tired. His bones ache and his body feels heavy, but he can't shake the image of Shiro turning from his head. It only fuels him to move out  _ now  _ and run in every direction possible. If he could have eyes in the sky, he could find Shiro faster. “Yeah? What's your plan?” 

 

“We take the highways north. They're bridged out from the rest of the city, there’s more space to move around and escape. We already know that they're not in Clara. We take the highways to Maden, and if it's infested enough we can go underground and use a radar to detect any survivors.” 

 

“So we search underground?” 

 

Pidge nods, “There can't be all that many crawlers down in the sewers of the city. Except maybe Hunk might throw up a couple of times. There are only four cities after Maden before we get to Altea, and they’re all surrounded by the woods.”

 

“So we basically camp out, is what you’re saying?”

 

Pidge nods. “We can scavenge the whole city as long as we have a safe base to return to by the time the sun sets. The plan is to have found a few survivors that can help us out, it’ll take me a while before Hunk can trust me that I can go out in a group that doesn’t involve him.”

 

“He trusts you alone?” Keith questions, legitimately confused. “Isn’t that-”

 

“It’s complicated. As scientists and engineers, we understand how important individual work is. Hunk and I spent a lot of time in a lab together, he knows that when it comes to working together, my performance in certain tasks drops significantly. You saw back in Clara how clouded my mind gets. In a circumstance where I was alone, I could’ve gotten through that horde.”

 

Keith nods in silent understanding. He was also much better at working alone, but his survival instincts allow him to be more cognizant of the situation around him than Pidge. He’s impulsive, but he can use the resources around him very well, and he won’t leave anyone behind. “You and I work well together though, can’t Hunk see that it’s the very reason we’re all still here?”

 

Pidge sighs, “When I met you back in Clara, I sort of understood  the kind of pressure Hunk feels. He promised Matt he would take care of me, and having that responsibility in a world like this is like standing on a tightrope where death is right under you. You and I had each other's lives in our hands, and I didn’t deal with it the way that I wanted to. So I can’t argue with Hunk, he’s doing the best he can.”

 

“Alright, but we’ll try to convince him tomorrow so we can move out as soon as possible.” Keith offers. “We all have people we are looking for up there. It’s best to move quickly before they start to travel anywhere else.”

 

Pidge looks over at Hunk, expression soft. “Yeah.”

 

Keith wants to question it, but instead he stalks over to the table, sleep no longer in his system and fishes out the maps in Pidge’s backpack. 

 

“What are you doing?” Pidge peeks back at Keith from the couch where Keith is huddled over a pair of maps, pen in hand. 

 

“I’m marking down our possible camping grounds on Maden and Balmera city, but once we get to Balmera we’ll need to go to the nearest police station and grab maps of the other cities north from there.”

 

“Sounds good.” Pidge says. A mellow orange light pours in through  the half-open wooden blinds covering the windows.Pidge slides off the couch and looks out into the desert hills. “The sun is coming up.”

 

“It should be getting pretty hot soon.”

 

“I’m gonna go up to the roof and check on our status. I’ll be back when the sun is halfway up.”

 

Keith hums in acknowledgement. Pidge climbs up to the roof and stands over the desert. The sun is a blood red color, heatwaves moving slow from the ground up to make it look like a mirage. They could feel the heat blowing in from the east, like an oncoming storm. 

  
Man Pidge really hates the heat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so remember when i said shit was gonna get real this chapter? ok so i kinda lied. good news is that real shit won't come in two weeks but in ONE WEEK :)


	4. something in the air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i said next week and its been like four months lol. relatively short chapter, but the good news is I've got like six chapters written past this one, so the uploads really won't take that long. i started college recently and it's literally 4:00am right now :) anyway hope you guys have a great day, please work hard during your high school career! It'll pay off I promise, take it from someone who didn't :')

“We need mosquito repellent.”

“I swear to  _ god. _ ”

The ride to Maden was exceptionally tense. Hunk was still bitter about leaving the cabin and even fought with Keith that  _ he _ should be the one driving, he’s older goddammit. Keith was having none of it. He found the car, he drives it. Pidge was just glad they got a move on, eyes keen on the large detailed paper map on their lap covering the entire passenger's seat. They held the crawler radar in one hand together with the edge of the map, occasionally checking to scout the area around them. It took all of three painstaking hours to convince Hunk to drive up to Maden, and by that time everyone was already exhausted.

Pidge notes the 40 mile mark until they hit the edge of Maden from their map, and within a minute the green sign “40 Miles to Maden, Exit 704” comes into view. Hunk is quietly mumbling to himself in the backseat, something about being hungry and upset with the both of them. Keith has an ominous feeling picking at his core, one that lets him know he can't feel Shiro anywhere near him. He wishes to have the optimism that he'll find him, but his instinct is telling him that Shiro isn't in Maden.

 

“It says here there's a forest reserve right before we hit the city, that's the place you marked on the map earlier.”

 

“So what’s your plan again?” Hunk questions from the backseat, Pidge rubs their face, they've gone over this so many times it's like an old folk tale at this point..

 

“Keith and I are going to check underground first, but I've already started to recognize the patterns of movement that separate the crawlers from the living.”

 

There's no answer, but Pidge can doubtlessly feel the tension rolling off Hunks shoulders like the heatwaves from the red desert sand.

Keith has said nothing since they passed Clara. The incessant prickle of his intuition has not ceased its gnawing inside him. He feels butterfly knives being tossed around in his gut, and he's not even sure how long ago he stopped focusing on the endlessly straight road.

 

“Keith,” Pidge calls out. 

 

“Yeah?”

 

“You haven't said anything.”

Well, for starters, Keith wasn't a big talker. He's only felt the need to recently since teamwork at this point in time is the only way they will be able to survive what awaits them up north. If the crawlers are really migrating south like they’re predicting, then there's an inevitably higher level danger the further up they go. “I think our plan is pretty clear. What else is there to say?”

“I want to continue our argument about the issue of mosquitoes .”

 

Keith snickers, “I think it's more of a biology lesson than an argument. Is this an excuse of yours so you can rant about mosquitoes ? All you had to do was ask.”

 

“Okay, listen,-Hunk groans loudly in the background- saying ‘I swear to god’ means you want to start something, so I'm only educating you about why insect repellent is top priority in our scavenging list.”

 

“Uh-huh. Sure.” Keith already checked out from the moment Pidge opened their mouth. He finds comfort in the deep emerald greenery that zooms by them at seventy five miles an hour. 

 

“I mean, those things are annoying whether or not they can actually turn you into a crawler. You know how a single bite triggers a huge inflammatory response? That's like, a colony of thousands of white blood cells and T cells trying to fight off infection. Can you imagine what hundreds of those little suckers can do to your body? Now spread that out over the span of a week, it'll completely sabotage our immune systems! It gives the virus an advantage. Not to mention all the nasty infections they carry from wherever they come from, dead bodies carry deadly diseases! Oh I really can’t stand mosquitoes.”

Hunk was snoring in the backseat at the end of Pidge’s rant, and Keith had just nodded along, pretending that he was listening. “Isn't that the reserve there?” Keith leans forward in his seat, eyes narrowing to get a better read of the sign.

 

“ASRUS  PROVINCE FOREST RESERVE” 

Pidge shrinks back in their seat, suddenly all the vigor drains out of their system as the day progresses. The plans for the day forward was making their nerves act up, but an image of their older brother flashes past their vision, and they find the strength to lift themselves up.

As Keith turns the curb to enter the forest reserve, he hits a large bump that tosses Hunk awake in his seat. He shakes his head, and looks out the window.

Keith has slowed down significantly, noting that the open path was not made for a car that had little resilience and adjustment for protuberance on the rocky trail. As if angered by the situation, the black Nissan beeps to indicate low levels of gasoline. There's a unanimous groan from all three of them, and Hunk let's his head roll back in defeat.

 

“Really, guys, there are literally rows of perfectly capable vehicles in the opposite lanes of the road blocks. Can someone tell me why we haven't ditched this car yet?” Hunk says, exasperated. 

 

Keith makes it a point to ignore his remark, feeling insulted, “So far there's no signs of any crawlers in the forest. But that doesn't mean we can let our guard down.” Keith announces.

 

“Hunk, do you have your walkie talkie?” 

 

“Always.” Hunk says proudly. 

 

Pidge checks their wrist, “it's three o’clock right now, it looks like it won't be a long walk to get to Maden. Do you think you can start setting up while we search the city?”

 

“Just leave me to it!”

 

“Shiro used to travel a whole lot” Keith notes as he unloads camping gear from the trunk of the car. “sometimes he'd bring back camping gear or random traveling essentials, I got everything I could from the cabin that he didn't take with him.” 

The forest is thick with trees and brush, the floor colored orange and brown with the piling of dead leaves over the past couple of fall seasons. Since it's the middle of spring, the trees are brimming with green leaves. The reserve was not accommodated for campers, since the purpose of a reserve is to not alter the state of nature for which it is in. They're lucky to find a small clearing, big enough to fit the car and the three of them deep in the forest. Just a few steps north their base is accompanied by a huge cliff behind a small gathering of trees, where a lake rests at the bottom of the coal hued rocks.

 

“My radar isn't picking up any signs of the infected for a hundred miles out in every direction.” Pidge says from the roof of the car, sliding down and searching through the things in the trunk.

 

“I can't believe there's a Nissan Altima parked in the forest.” Hunk says painfully as he opens the trunk to fish out the camping gear.

Keith helps Hunk spread out the large green tent, it should be enough to have space for the three of them to stretch their limbs. The packaging on the tent showcased space for up to four people. When he finishes helping with setting up the base and skeleton, he lets Hunk take over the rest and grabs his sword and various knives.

Pidge has their small backpack filled with things to make the trip, radar in hand. ”Ready to head out?”

 

“Ready.” Keith confirms.

 

The city was a lot closer than they imagined. It was a half hour walk from the base just following the path that their car took back out into the road. The highway was blocked off by rows of endless cars seemingly stuck in never ending traffic, but it was an easy obstacle to overcome. Pidge remembers the location of the first sewer, pulling out their mini radar. “There's a couple of crawlers spread out across the area, but it doesn't look like anything dangerous for now. The sewers should be towards the middle of the first street there.” 

It was hard to miss the first entrance to the sewers, as the rusted top sat at the center of a vacant road. Keith pulled it open, let Pidge step down the ladder first and then followed after, sealing the entrance after Pidge turned on a flashlight built into their radar device.

The first thing that hits is the smell. It's something awful, the scents of decomposing animals, shit and contaminated water mix with the stuffy atmosphere to create a cauldron of smell that is possibly worse than death itself. The sight below them, where their feet burrow in some unknown substance doesn't make it look any better. The floor is mushy and brown, there's an uncertainty about whether it's mud, or something a lot less reassuring. Keith is thankful for the flashlight only giving necessary vision, he will not hesitate to climb out of here if he gets one more look at the ground that seems to move like it's alive.

“God that smell.” Pidge retches.

Keith stands behind them, a hand over his mouth and nose. “You said the streets didn’t look that bad, so what are we doing here?” He coughs, and the sound echoes across the various openings.

Pidge is pointing their flashlight around the circular walkways, deep in thought as they trace their mental map towards the center of the city. “My device actually had really crap signal since we left Hunk, the radar would flash dots that would suddenly disappear. I can’t carry my signal booster around, so I’m not trusting the data it’s giving me. That’s why we’re down here. There’s no way there can be just a handful of crawlers in this entire city alone.” Their face contorts in recognition, and starts to walk towards the middle entrance.”This way.”

They both become religious upon the discovery of a small walkway towards the edge of the space they walk in, muddy, but at least mush free. There’s several winding paths, Keith has no idea how Pidge seems to walk so definitively, like this place was engraved into the back of their hand.

Pidge has been keeping their eye on the seemingly broken radar, but the same results remain. “The crawlers at Clara must've been the ones from this town. One more turn and we will be arriving at the hos-”

The device begins to beep wildly, Pidge is startled by the noise and clicks some buttons to clear up the signal and encryption clearly. Panic settles in their gut, trembling as if they were a fish out of water.

 

“What is it?” Keith dares to ask.

When Pidge looks at him, he knows what he's about to hear is anything far from good.

 

“Northeast, a lot of them. So many of them. It's a huge horde coming straight towards us.” 

 

“I'm sure they're above ground right now.” Keith tries to reassure, noticing the prickling anxiety rolling off of Pidge in waves. “The ladder is right up ahead, it must be the exit.” 

 

Just as Keith finished that sentence, a crawler peeks out from the opposite end. It was shuffling groggily, rotten skin clinging to its bones. They could still make it to the ladder safely from the distance, but the simple presence of the undead was unnerving to them. Keith grips his blade subconsciously. 

 

“Let's get to the ladder quickly, I don't know how they managed to get into the sewers.” Pidge says.

 

A few moments pass, they're just a few feet away from the ladder when Pidge’s radar beeps wildly again, the first crawler turns towards them, head lolled to the side, and begins to shuffle towards them quickly, it's empty eye sockets filled with purpose. 

 

“Go, Pidge, go right now.”

 

Another crawler turns the corner, and another, and soon the swarm that Pidge had detected earlier was snarling and moving towards them like an oncoming tsunami.

 

“Go!”  Pidge jumps the ladder by twos and Keith is right at their heels. A crawler manages to grab Keith's boot, but he quickly kicks it off, hearing its neck snap back fatally. 

 

Pidge climbs out of the sewer and leans over the exit to pull Keith up. Keith climbs out successfully, throwing the top on the exit to block out the snarling noises coming from within the depths. 

They turn to inspect the hospital they arrived at, only to be greeted with a gruesome scene. Again, the pestilential scent of death surrounds them as a drooling crawler snarls above them. Pidge screams as the crawler grabs them by the shoulders and opens its rotting, yellow toothed mouth. Keith hardly has time to react, before he can cut into the nape of the crawlers neck a knife slices through the air and penetrates the nape before him. The blade cuts easily through the thinned grey flesh of the undead, penetrating past the brain stem and through the throat. The sharp knife barely nicks Pidge’s nose, and with a crippling moan, the crawler releases Pidge and crumples to the pavement. Pidge shoves themselves back and slides away from the dead crawler, breathing heavily. “Holy shit holy shit holy shit.”

The person who threw the knife steps forward to retrieve it, pressing his hiking boot onto the back of the crawler and pulling the blade out cleanly. He wipes it on the crawlers tattered clothes and brings the knife back to its holster tied on his thigh.

“Geez, if you hadn't been screaming your head off I would've shot you by accident.”

Pidge just stares, dumbfounded. Keith rushes over to their side, crouching beside them and looking at the male standing across from them.

 

The tan boy flashes a cunning smile, a shiny black pistol spinning dangerously in his free hand. “Well hello,  _ compadres _ . What has weaklings like you traveling here to Maden?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! leave some feedback for me? and a kudos if you liked it? pretty please? 
> 
> also can u guess who was just introduced lol


	5. the deep end of things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i figure this story is moving at a real snails pace, like, if there is any animal out there that is slower than a sloth, or a snail, i bet the development of this fic is at least 5 times slower. 
> 
> anyway, happy day! its 4:30am again and i have an 8am tomorrow, or, this morning? :)

 

Bitter heat waves sweep across the arid city of Maden. Currently, Pidge is having an out of body experience from their near encounter with death while Keith is trying to shake away the image of the horde in the sewers, that's the kind of stuff you see in nightmares.

 The boy who saved them watches them with amusement. He's a tall, lanky Latino looking boy wearing what used to be a white baseball tee with deep ocean blue sleeves the color of his almond shaped eyes. His jeans are on tight, like the leather holster wrapped around his thigh. He has three knives strapped safely in them, and a belt with a gun sheath.

 “Not gonna answer?” The boy says smugly, “Or are you still in shock because of my awesome aiming skills?”

 

Keith quivers back to reality. “Who are you?”

 

The boy holds an open palm up, “Ah ah ah, not so fast. I asked first, and as the person who saved your life, I believe _I_ should know who _you_ are first.”

 Keith bristles, looking down at Pidge who seems like they haven't blinked since the crawler let go of them. “My name is Keith,” he answers reluctantly, only after scrutinizing every inch of the boy before him. “And this is Pidge.”

 The boy places a hand on his chin, humming in inquiry as he looked them both up and down, trying to size them up. “Well, welcome to Maden, your savior here is Lance.” He smiles in all his confident glory.  “What brought you two here? I'm pretty sure every living thing knows not to come north, you're only lucky there's this many undead here.”

“What do you mean _lucky_ ?” Pidge asks, the life suddenly coming back to them, standing and dusting themselves off. In the time after being saved, there's a bubbling anger in their aura, literally nothing was turning out the way they had planned it out.  “I could have been killed by _either_ of you! And before that, we narrowly escaped death in the sewers because of a horde of those damn things! There weren't even supposed to _be_ any crawlers in the sewers! You call that _lucky?!”_

 Lance stares at them dumbfoundedly, then beads of sweat form on his forehead. “Why would you go down to the sewers?”

 “Trying to avoid exactly what we ran into.” Pidge snaps, patting themselves down angrily, feeling for all their belongings. They stop abruptly, frozen from a sudden revelation, Pidge looks up in horror, “It was you wasn't it? You trapped all of those crawlers in the sewers.”

 Lance holds his hands up in defense, “Hey, if I had known there was someone crazy enough to actually go down there then _maybe_ I would have reconsidered throwing fireworks in there yesterday.”

 

 Keith groans, pinching his nose. “We walked through shit for nothing.”

 

 “No wonder my radar wasn't picking up any signs of the virus around here…” Pidge notes thoughtfully.

 

“Are we gonna play the blame game? Cause I am a _winner_ at that game, hit me man, hit me.”

 

“Nobody is blaming anyone.” Keith says, “Maybe we shouldn't have risked the sewers, but we are alive, and you saved Pidge, so it all evens out.”

 

Pidge looks around the area. The sky has darkened to an ominous grey the color of a cadaver's rotting skin, distant rumbling indicates an oncoming downpour. Papers and dead leaves are swept across the vacant city, cars crashed together and shop windows smashed asunder. Glass litters every inch of the asphalt, and the neon red sign of the hospital across the street that reads “RED CROSS” flickers with fatigue, some of the letters completely blacked out. “This place got hit harder than the last, what on Earth happened here?”

 Lance steps into the middle of the street, extending his arms to let the cooling air catch under his dirty shirt. “Poor bastards got hit so fast and so hard they didn't even see it coming. This place is a gold mine, I've been sleeping here for weeks and I haven't run out of anything yet.”

 “How could that be possible?” Pidge asks, curling in on themselves as the weather gets more detestable.

 

Lance shrugs, “Small city, the virus wiped them out before they could even say ah.”

 Keith is suddenly hit with a wave of perturbation. If the virus is really as deadly as it seems, every second he spends away from Shiro now is like walking on a tightrope where death is waiting at the bottom. Ice cubes trickle down his spine and paralyze him for a second, wiring his brain to think of the worst possible situations Shiro could find himself in. When he comes to, he notices Pidge looking at him, but he can't decipher exactly what it is Pidge is feeling. Was it sympathy? Was it empathy? Sadness? None of them clicked, but behind the honey of their eyes, he could see that there was something hidden, a caged emotion that was perfectly disguised.

“Hellooooo? Earth to the love birds, I don't think right now is a good time to be cuddling up to each other considering- I don't know- you almost _died_.”

 Keith turns his attention towards him so fast Lance flinches back. There's desperation in his throat that bubbles up from beneath his ribcage and bursts from his mouth as he speaks. “Did anyone cross through here? Did you see anyone in the city before we got here?”

 Lance presses his hands against Keith’s chest and pushes him back. “Woah buddy, do I look like I have eyes in the back of my head? How should I know? I've been minding my own business since I got here.”

 

Liquid anger flows through his veins and he leans away from Lance. “Dammit.”

 “Keith, it's going to get dark soon.” Pidge places a hand on his shoulder and pulls him back gently. “We have about two and a half hours left before we have to return to make it on time. Let's get what we need from the city.”

 

 “I guess that means we gotta go our separate ways then.” Lance announces in feigned, dramatic sadness. Straight out of a horrible acting audition. “Our time together was sweet, I will keep you in my cherished memory.”

 

“Why don't you come with us? We could use your guidance, since you seem to know a lot about surviving the apocalypse.” Pidge suggests.

 

Lance's eyes suddenly lose their playfulness and flash a hint of anger, lips turned down with vulnerability “No! I have-” he pauses, realizing how he’d suddenly lost himself, and takes a deep breath to regain his composure. “I've got my own battles to fight.”

 

In that moment, Pidge’s device gives an alarming beep. They take out their radar from their pocket and scan the area. “There are a couple of crawlers you missed, careful out there then.”

 

“Woah! What _is_ that?!” Lance says, interest piqued. He leans over Pidge to get a better look at the device. “That is so awesome! Where'd you get it?”

 

“I made it myself, together with a close friend.” Pidge says.

 

“How'd you do it?” Lance says, and immediately afterwards looks up to see Keith signaling ‘please don't’ by waving his hand at his throat.

 It was too late, Pidge began their tangent. “Well me and my engineering buddy Hunk scrapped the parts from an airplane and snagged a couple of satellites. We manipulated the transmitter in the radar to detect signals of the virus using specific bioengineering tactics that will send back the frequency of the c-”

 “Okay I think I get it, where did you learn all this stuff?”

 

Keith facepalms.

 This time, unlike all the others, Pidge actually gives Lance a straight answer. “At the Garrison Laboratory up north, I visited often because of my father.”

 

Lance looks like he’d been struck by lightning. “Garrison? _The_ Garrison? The _Galaxy Garrison_?”

 

Keith takes note of the name, it sounded very oddly and distantly familiar.

 

“Yes, the very same.”

 

“That's exactly where I'm headed! You don't happen to be going the same way?”

 

“We are, actually.” Pidge says, “At least, that's if we find what we are looking for, if not, further north.”

 

“Then, can I take back my answer on that offer of joining you?”

 

Pidge smiles.

 

“ _Nope,_ I take it back. I take back taking back your offer.” Lance whines as Keith and Pidge drag him back to their camp after taking all they could get from the city. Hunk is waiting around the car, having set up the tent perfectly and dug a hole for a safe fire. The sun is just about setting, and Pidge’s radar still reads a clean space, like spotless skin. Lance really succeeded in shutting the corpses out. “I _so_ take it back. We are _camping out?_ There's an entire city with beds waiting to be laid on!”

 

“We didn't know what to expect.” Pidge retorts. “For sure it was definitely not that someone had trapped an entire city of crawlers by throwing fireworks into sewage pits.”

 

Hunk pokes his head out from the hood of the Nissan, “What was that about fireworks?” He asks.

 

“You parked a Nissan _Altima_ in the forest?! Absolutely barbaric.” Lance cries.

 

“I know!” Hunk enthusiastically agrees, “I said the exact same thing!”

 

The two prance towards each other and talk animatedly, conspiring against the other two savage scavengers and their infuriating act of parking a low riding car in the forest.

 Pidge and Keith share a look, laughing quietly to themselves at bearing witness to the bloom of what will most likely become a very strong and beautiful  friendship.

 

“Guys!” Hunk calls, looking like a child fresh in their youth opening a christmas present for the first time. His eyes sparkle and his skin absolutely glows. “Where did you find him? Can we keep him?”

 Lance has a face like the friend who wants to sleep over but hasn't asked his parents yet.

 

“Weren't you talking about leaving just a few minutes ago?” Keith asks, crossing his arms.

 

“Well, that was before I met Hunk. Now I met Hunk, and I'm willing to camp out with a Nissan Altima parked next to our tent.” Lance says.

 

“Fair enough.” Keith says. “The tent is big enough to fit all of us anyway.”

 

Lance and Hunk give each other high fives. “By the way, how soon do you guys plan to leave here?”

 

“As soon as we’ve gathered everything we can to sustain us for a few weeks. I'll say in about four days.”

 

Lance hums in acknowledgment. “Makes sense. I think it's worth to mention that pushing further up is going to be pre-tty hard. The zombies only get worse from here on out, bigger cities, more zombies. I've tried, but I always get pushed back here.”

 

“It's no wonder.” Pidge says, “You're trying to get to the Garrison alone? It’s impossible.”

 

Lance’s blue eyes dart to the ground, his demeanor visibly sinking. “Yeah. Impossible.”

 

The atmosphere is suddenly heavy and dark, but thankfully Pidge has the sense of mind to bring up a rather light point. “Ah! Since the city is practically empty, I was thinking maybe Hunk could join us tomorrow.”

 

“Me? I haven't gone out on a trip since I ate that expired spam. Spam isn't even supposed to have an expiration date!”

 

That remark seems to make Lance light right up, he laughs so hard he clutches his stomach, “Where the hell did you find expired spam?!”

 

“ _Anyway.”_ Pidge grits, “It'll help us carry more stuff. We have to take advantage of all the things we can gather from this trip alone.”

 

“Okay, I agree, but, can we please get rid of that Nissan?” Lance says. “Bigger truck bigger load my friend. That trunk can only carry half my ass cheek.”

 

“Impossible.” Keith says, there's a tone in his voice that says he's completely offended by Lance’s claim to get rid of the Nissan, he almost died in that Nissan. it's his Nissan. “If that were true I'd have to be driving a smart car. Or a truck with two wheels.”

 

Lance squints at him. “Are you saying I don't have an ass? I will pull my pants down _right-”_

 

“Oh my _god._ Can we please get to the point here? Hunk, say something before these idiots end up getting naked.”

 

Hunk holds out a hand, “Let me be the first to say that I would rather eat another can of expired spam than have to see _either_  of you naked. Please don't get naked.”

 

“Point taken.” Lance says, and they drop the subject.

 

That night, they sit by the fire together and talk about superficial things. The world as it is hasn't settled in with them yet, there was no pressing reality of a global wipe out. There was no pain, there were only memories of a life they live in their fantasies now. And yet, like a puff of fog sinking down to the earth in the early rise of the morning, there was the blurry essence of a new life filled with danger.

 Keith’s second night tosses and turns along with his sleep. He can't stop thinking about Shiro, about the blade sitting outside their tent, untouched by the murky blood of an undead corpse. Maybe it's his subconscious keeping him up as he imagines over and over again the moment his blade was about to cut a corpse's head clean off its shoulders. He wonders when the day will come that the cobalt metal of his blade will see the rain of brown blood.

 He feels someone stir inside the tent, quiet shuffling beside him. A shadow sits up in the darkness, he sees the outline of messy hair and round glasses pressed into the blue backdrop of the thin tent sheet. He stays still, knowing that Pidge wouldn’t be able to see that he’s watching them.

 Pidge scoots to the entrance of the tent and crawls out. Keith watches them stand and walk forward to sit on the series of wooden logs they set around the burned out fire. Overcome by curiosity, and a significant pull of his intuition, Keith follows suit, careful not to wake either of the boy sleeping on either side of him.

 When he stands, Pidge is looking at the stars. They don’t look at Keith, “There’s something that I’ve kept from you.” They say, voice wavering at the edges.

 Keith moves to sit beside them, tracing their line of vision. “Shiro knew every constellation by heart, I never had the mind to listen to him when he babbled about them.” He feels the need to say, because thoughts of Shiro calmed him. Thoughts of Shiro made him look at the sky differently.

 

“I used to spend much of my time with my brother.” Pidge shares as well,  “He was trained in every field, it was through him I learned everything I know now.  He enjoyed his line of work, but his absolute favorite role was outside of the laboratory. He was a medic for the army at the Garrison.”

 

Keith felt something tickle his memory, short stories he would hear from Shiro, often dark times he never wanted to talk about. The nights he would hear Shiro groan and toss in his sleep, they were all a result of his experience in the army. He never liked to talk about it to Keith, but there were times he absolutely could not keep his nightmares to himself.

 

“My brother used to talk about everything he experienced in the field. He was truly brilliant, knew every remedy and every symptom, but these weren’t the things he would talk about. He would always come back to one person, always talk about one particular person, and his name,” Pidge pauses, finally looking at Keith. It all clicks at once, the caged emotion behind the honey of their irises, the reason the Garrison seemed to flicker like a weak night light in the corner of Keith’s consciousness. Everything made sense.

 

“His name was Shiro.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope this chapter kindA explains why i have keith and pidge interacting so much? ill probably look back in a few days and realize "wow this characterization is actual shit" but maybe one day i will have the guts to go back and reread after i write it, cause i 200% just write it in one go and say 'fuck it, it works' 
> 
> anyway thanks for reading ily


	6. the birds sing (songs of death) for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aka the gang fucks around for a while

“Is this it? Is this where I die?” 

 

Pidge slaps Hunk upside the head after he tumbles over the flimsy grey fence and stands on his feet. “Stop joking like that Hunk, it's not funny!” 

Hunk flinches and whines, rubbing the back of his head and pouting. Although Pidge was less than half his size, they packed quite the punch. He shifts uncomfortably, a black bag strapped tightly across his chest that holds all their extra weapons and ammo, courtesy of Lance to make it three times heavier with his haul of ammo and guns.

 

“In my language, we call that a  _ sapé.”  _ Lance interjects. “Good ol fashioned greeting from the Latina moms.” 

 

“What's a  _ sapé _ ?” Keith asks. It’s the first time he’s said anything since they left camp, he kept turning Pidge’s revelation to him over in his head, and the fact that it’s taken them this long to come out and say it. Lance’s movements distract him from his thoughts and he  immediately regrets asking the question when he sees the peculiarly evil glint in Lance’s oceanic eyes. 

 

“It's like  _ this.”  _ Lance says the last word as if preparing to move a heavy object. Keith liked to pride himself in his fast reflexes up until this very moment, when Lance’s open palm makes a satisfying slapping sound on the back of his head despite the fact that Keith had more than just a full head of hair. Lance’s fingers are long and laced with experienced, the palm of his hand held every Latino root he could think of. It was, undoubtedly, the impeccable skill of a boy that got in trouble with his mother often. 

 

“ _ Mother of fuck! _ ” Keith holds his head, feeling fireworks explode behind his eyelids. “Jesus christ what did they  _ do  _ to you?!” 

 

“Let's just say I wasn't the best behaved in all my family.” Lance gives an awkward laugh. Again, Keith feels the familiar sense of misplaced timidness, almost as if Lance was disappearing more and more with every word. 

 

“I bet.” Keith says quickly and as lightly as he can muster, seeing that maybe the topic of family was something Lance would rather avoid. They cross a small field of yellowing grass towards a police station built with brown, crumbling bricks. The sun is high over their heads, beating down its powerful hot rays to fester them. It was the second day of their exploration, and a police station seemed fit to find ammo or other practical weaponry. 

 

“You know what makes me really uncomfortable?” Hunk begins after they find out the front doors of the police station are locked. “Flat roofs. Like, flat roofs you can walk on. What if a crawler just falls off the roof and splat, blood all over you. Or worse, fall on top of you.” 

 

“This place has a flat roof.” Pidge says.

 

“Exactly, and the doors are locked! No other place we've been to has had locked doors. I'm getting bad vibes man.” 

 

Lance is still pulling at the doors, and he bickers with Keith about breaking the glass open. 

 

“Guys.” Pidge calls rather loudly, effectively catching their attention.  “First of all, Hunk kind of has a point. Isn't it weird that the doors to this place are locked? Second, there's also back doors and side doors, you don't need to break the glass down, it's a police station. Show some respect.”

 

Lance and Keith glare at each other. There hasn't been the best communication after the joke about Lance’s ass, and although it feels like playful hate, they would most likely be much better off surviving alone than with each other.

 

“Pidge, what does your radar say about the crawlers in the area?” Keith asks.

 

Pidge is looking at the radar, “I will have to set up a mute option in the update of this thing, but when it comes to specific locations as small as this police station, even if there were a hundred crawlers inside I would only be able to tell with one flashing dot. The condensed horde would be too close to count one by one, so the frequencies all clash with each other and form one dot. I'll need to adjust that. But to answer your question, yes, there may be a few inside.” 

 

“I only understood that yes there's zombies inside.” Lance says, eyebrows knit in confusion. 

 

“Yes, Lance, that basically sums it up. And by the looks of it, if the doors are locked and there's crawlers inside, that means there's an opening.” Pidge confirms.

 

“We’ll stop by the electronic stores next to see if we can find any parts for your radar. You seem to be having a lot of trouble.” Keith says, and although he had every good intention, his claim still embarrassed Pidge. 

 

Pidge blushes sheepishly and rubs the back of their neck. 

They walk around the building to look for the the side entrance only to find someone else had knocked it down before them. “Damn! Someone  _ was  _ here before us, they must've taken all the good stuff.” Lance says in irritation, taking a knife from its holster around his thigh. “If there really are zombies in here, prepare for the encounter. They're actually a lot harder to handle than they seem. Especially up close.”

Hunk and Pidge were not officially properly trained for combat, especially not for close encounters with crawlers. As they enter, quietly stepping over the hollow metal fallen door, Lance leads the group with Keith at the very back behind Pidge and Hunk. He has two knives strapped to the small of his back, sword in hand.

It was midday, the sun high over the white clouds. The birds were singing songs of a memorized earth, blissfully unaware of the hell that befell six weeks ago. The winds swayed healthy, full tree branches back and forth, and blew loudly in their ears. But these were the kinds of details that were noticed only after stepping into the pitch black hallway of the police station.

It almost felt like teleporting into the midnight of a new world. Suddenly everyone was a fading silhouette, the colors of their skin and clothes dissipating into the light as they stepped through the doorway. The only light in the hallway was a flickering white bulb dangling from a thread. The sounds of nature were cancelled out by the thick brick walls of the police station swallowing them like a hungry beast, only a dead, ominous silence accompanying them.

Finally, something stirs ahead of them. As they exit the narrow hallway and enter a wider hallway with windows that provide sunlight, there's movement that forces the group to instinctively go quiet.

It is no surprise when a crawler shuffles across the hallway, looking as dead as a fresh corpse. Time has withered the skin to a leathery deep grey, thin empty veins running along the expanse of the wrinkled skin. Its hair has begun to fall out now, cheeks and jaw barely holding themselves intact with the deteriorating bones. It groans through a torn throat, an animalistic sound that sends shivers through all of them.  The black uniform and silver badge over the right breast pocket shows that the crawler was once an officer of this town. Lance holds his knife up, wrist taut and ready despite the large gap between him and the crawler.

Behind them, another one stalks across the hallway, dressed in the same uniform. The window behind it is broken, yellow blinds rattling against the wooden frame as the breeze whisks through the broken glass. Keith notices something odd about the shape of the broken window, and decides to check what it is that irked his core.

 

“Keith!” Pidge whispers sharply as he tiptoes away from them towards the crawler in the opposite end of Lance. Both crawlers’ heads jerk in the direction of the sound, and Pidge slaps a hand over their mouth. 

 

“Shit!” Lance shouts, and throws the knife forward, stabbing straight through the brain stem of one crawler in exact accuracy. The crawler topples backward  and falls to the floor. Three more appear behind it and Lance is forced to draw another knife and take them down by fighting. As they both stagger toward him at the same distance, Lance uses his foot to kick one back, it grunts in resistance and steps back from the force, toppling over the corpse in which Lance’s knife is still sticking forth from its neck. As the crawler rises clumsily to its feet, Lance uses that window of time to spear his knife through the mouth of the other. 

 

Keith on the other hand, is frozen in place. The crawler stalks towards him, and although it's eyes are laminated with a light blue hue, it's eerily as though it were looking straight at Keith. The pupils are disproportionately dilated, mouth curled up in a menacing snarl. Keith can't feel the sword in his hands, instead, he feels like he's shoulder deep in quicksand and still sinking. His brain was screaming at him to  _ move,  _ do something,  _ anything.  _

The crawler is standing over him now, almost able to touch the skin of his arm. It opens its feral mouth and screeches hungrily.

Pidge is the one to react in time. They run forward with all their might, grab one of Keith’s knives strapped to the small of his back and leap from the wall with one foot, cutting through the back of the crawlers neck in one swipe. The crawler falls forward and gives a gargled snarl before going completely still at Keith’s feet. There's nothing but red and black swimming in their vision, muscles gained momentary strength from the adrenaline pumping within them.

In the end, Keith could not use his sword. For the first time in his life, his impulse and instincts were swallowed by his fear. In the light of fight or flight, Keith was neither.

Luckily, it was the only crawler coming from his side, because as soon as Pidge came to, they dropped the knife and fell to their knees, breathing heavily. Images of their own close encounter to death were replaying in their head.

Lance and Hunk rush over, Hunk quickly assessing Keith for any wounds and Lance helping Pidge stand again.

 

Lance hooks an arm under Pidge’s shoulder and pulls them up. “Once you meet death in the face, it changes you.” He says somberly. 

 

Pidge has tears in their eyes, but they weren't crying for any particularly shocking reason, just choking on too much air. 

 

Keith is looking down at them, face full of shame and regret. “I'm sorry, I made you do something you didn't want to.” 

 

Pidge looks up, “This world isn't ours anymore, we will always have to do something we don't want to from now on.” 

 

Hunk pats Keith on the shoulder, “Don't blame yourself too much, I would've done the same.” 

 

Lance has maroon colored blood staining his shirt, drops of it across his face. “Desensitization is a process, it won't be easy. Your first kill, it's never easy.” 

 

Pidge wipes the tears from their eyes. “Let's get what we came for, I don't want to spend another minute in this place.” 

 

As they round the hallway into another, Keith glances at the broken window and spots fresh crimson blood dripping from the jagged edges of the window.

 

“Guys.” He calls, and everyone turns to look at him, then traces his gaze to the broken window. “Someone is alive.” They see the same thing he does, staring in awe at the healthy crimson blood that drips from the broken edges of glass on the window. 

 

There's a heavy uneasiness from the sight of the blood that makes Keith’s stomach churn. It was the kind of feeling one usually gets from walking past an alley at midnight, or jogging past a house that's been left vacant for years. It was odd to him, since his initial reaction would usually be to think that Shiro was alive and surviving, but it was a far reach, one that his intuition carefully pulled him away from. 

The feedback he gets from his teammates however, is exactly the opposite.

 

“It's another survivor…” Lance comments, an unfamiliar tenderness and excitement in his tone. It was almost, hopeful.

 

Keith looks up, and is suddenly aware that they all have the same hopeful yearning graced across their facial expressions. Each one of them is picturing a different person, and the myriad of those faces creates a false illusion of a survivor who might actually be long gone. Keith is far too familiar with this kind of disappointment, the one that tastes like the bitter water from the sea and dries your lips all the same. The one that feels like being submerged into a tank of mud and being locked in until the anxiety sucks the very last bits of oxygen left in your lungs. 

In any other situation, Keith would allow himself to feel that hope again, but there's something inexplicable that stops him every time. His intuition tells him that there's something so awfully  _ wrong  _ about the blood on the window.

He decides to shake off the ominous cloud of dubiousness, urging the group forward with empty promises of coming in contact with the owner of the blood.

They find the gun room easily, and as expected, it was ransacked of all valuable items, only loose parts scattered across the grey blue department carpet stained brown with old blood. They find a few replaceable parts for their handguns, even get their hands on an automatic shotgun, two bullets in place and ready to be used. There's stray ammo dropped by the careless people before them, and they were thankful for the lack of resourcefulness from whatever group decided to suck the place almost completely dry.

There were a series of knives strewn across random cabinets, and small cardboard boxes of ammo that were overlooked.

 

“Whoever came through here must have been in a hurry.” Hunk comments as their black weaponry bag begins to fill up. 

 

“Considering that the crawlers that were here were still standing, they weren't looking to fight, just take.” Pidge offers.

 

“And another thing,” Hunk inquires “If the door was broken down, why would someone smash through the window?” 

 

There's an ensued silence of critical thought. Nobody has any input for a while, until finally, Keith catches on to the pattern.

 

“The window is closer than the door, since the edges look jagged and there was no tape, they jumped through it without seeing the door. The blood is fresh, so it happened recently. If I'm right, there should be another broken window on the other side of this building, and if that's right, the person was running away from something.” 

 

The group nods in agreement. “Guess we’ll have to find out.” Lance says.

 

They walk to the opposite end of the building after gathering all they could find that was left in the gun room and discover that there was in fact a second window broken, confirming Keith’s claim.

 

“Running away from zombies?” Lance asks, “seems unlikely.” 

 

“Maybe they were running away from someone.” Hunk suggests.

 

“Aren't survivors supposed to stick together?” Pidge ponders

 

“Guess not.” Keith concludes, and they ask no further questions.

 

As promised, they head to the electronic stores next. Pidge and Hunk talk excitedly about their inventions, using a scientific vernacular both Keith and Lance are far from familiar with. The stores are brimming with intact appliances, waiting to be taken apart by the skillful hands of the engineers that sift through them. 

Lance and Keith watch them scuttle around like kids under a Christmas tree, both completely unaware of the dangerously close distance they are to each other.

 

It all starts when Lance sniffs the air, “Man, you really stink.” He says to Keith, who immediately whips his head around to glare at him. “When was the last time you showered?” 

 

“Right around the last time you changed that shirt.” Keith bites back, “I thought you said you didn't run out of anything while you were here, but maybe you weren’t thinking about clothes.” 

 

“At least I don't smell like I've been dragged around a sewer!” Lance shouts, they get closer and closer with every snarky remark until they're butting heads with each other.

 

“No, you don't. You smell like you were dragged around the sewer  _ and  _ dumped in a pile of crawlers.” 

 

“Listen here you-” Lance is about to begin, but Hunk comes between them and separates their heads. 

 

“Okay, so I think we could  _ all  _ use a decent shower.” He says. Lance and Keith continue to glare at each other. 

 

“Are there any places here that have running water?” Pidge asks. 

 

“I always went to different houses, but there's also sports centers with showers, haven't tried those out yet.” Lance says after tearing his eyes away from Keith. 

 

“Guess we’ll make a quick stop at Walmart.” Pidge says, and they continue on their way. 

 

The entire group feels a lot more relaxed after a cold shower at the sports center. A heated debate decides that the group shouldn't split off to take independent showers, so they settled with the thin curtains that separated each of the shower stalls. They feel fresh, clean, new. Apart from the clothes they wear now, each sporting a different color of shorts and t shirt, (except Keith, who deliberately searched for the pant section at walmart),  they packed a few extra sets of clothes for the trip.

 

“Have you ever considered shaving your mullet off?” Keith hears Lance ask over the sound of a towel ruffling his hair dry. “It’s easier to clean, less weight to carry, and it’s ugly as f-”

 

“Have you considered shutting the hell up? First you comment on my smell, now you’re dissing my hair.” Keith shakes the towel in his hair harshly for the last time before pulling back to glare at Lance from where the black clumped sections of his hair fall neatly behind him, small droplets of cold water prickling the skin of his exposed back.

 

“He’s getting back at you for making fun of his ass.” Hunk says from somewhere behind Keith.

 

Lance only sticks his tongue out at Keith.

 

“This was a rather productive day.” Hunk sighs as they make their way back to the car. He feels oddly satisfied at finally taking part in a trip despite how adamant he'd been about not going before. Their bags are full of supplies and food, it seems like they'll be able to hold off for a couple of weeks if things get really bad.

 

“Oh. My. God.” Lance drops his bags. There's a sudden moment of shared panic, and the entire group tenses as they turn to see what Lance had freaked out over. Lance runs forward and wraps his arms around the edge of an RV. “We are not leaving without this.” 

 

“You scared us.” Hunk says with a huff, they all sigh in unison and deflate at the sight of Lance.

 

“And just how do you think we are going to get that thing out of this lane?” Keith motions to the entire area swarmed with cars that are parked at all angles. Getting the RV out of the tight space seems like a tedious task. 

 

“The same way we are leaving that Altima in the forest.” Lance says matter of factly, Keith’s eye twitches. 

 

The Altima is voted out, three to one. Keith is still bitter about it as they unload the trunk and begin to take the things over to the RV. “I don't understand how you plan to keep gas in this thing.” He argues, shoving the tent bag into the small hallway inside it. “It uses up way too much gas.” 

 

“Have you seen all these cars?” Lance says, extending his arms to the open as he steps out of the RV. “This lane never ends, the entire highway all across is completely covered in abandoned cars, and I'm pretty sure they've got a decent amount of fuel in them.” 

 

The fact does little to ease Keith’s bitterness. 

They're on their last loading, Hunk has checked the stats of the RV and determined that it was healthy and actually fairly young into its life span. They all work together to move the cement roadblocks that cage the RV into a tight space, Lance driving it carefully out of the traffic. Finally, they're set to move on north.

 

“This only took a day instead of four.” Pidge chirps happily. “I think we'll be alright from here on out.” 

 

“Hey Keith,” Lance calls from the drivers seat of the RV, Keith looks up at the small window where Lance is poking his head out and looking at him with a shit eating grin, “Finally found something that can hold half my ass cheek.”

 

Keith glares at him, but there was an unambiguous playfulness in Lance’s tease that wouldn’t allow him to be genuinely pissed at him. 

It was in that moment, that things would change drastically. As they're making their way into the RV, there's a distant blood curdling scream coming directly from the city they were just about to leave.

 

There were too many questions, too many possibilities, that it was impossible to ignore the fact that someone was alive. They all look at each other, knowing, feeling,  _ hoping _ . They shut the doors behind them and run directly towards the sound coming from the bowels of the city. 


	7. the words i never got to say

The city feels haunted as they run through the empty streets of Maden. Keith’s legs feel oddly disconnected from his body, as if some unknown force was pulling him toward danger and he couldn’t fight it, like a bad dream he had no control over. Lance is a few paces ahead of him, Pidge and Hunk closely behind him. 

 

They were chasing the mirage of a body of water in the driest desert, the scream that had ripped through the stuffy atmosphere like a set of dull claws had drawn them like wild animals drawn to weak prey. It had been so alive, so pleading, so desperate, and it had been the first sign of life apart from their own.

 

The scream had come from the police station, just beyond the fence they’d climbed over the day before. The sight before them was more horrifying than any confrontation with a crawler they’d ever experience. 

 

There’s a man beyond the fence, a man who carried an enormous weight on his belly, hovering menacingly over a woman with short jet black hair. His skin is pink and alive, thriving with pulsing energy as his muscles  stretch the  camouflage green shirt he’s wearing. He’s holding a knife over his head, ready to strike the woman down any second. Her elbows are pervaded with glass tearing through her skin,  blood staining her arms a deep red color. 

 

They stand frozen for a second, their heartbeats ringing in their ears and drowning all other sounds out. The sky is dark again, winds picking up speed and thrashing green and brown leaves like the limbs of the fair skinned woman he holds down by her neck, her nails clawing helplessly at his thick fingers.

Keith notices something then, hanging from the belt loop of his pant where his belly bulges  with greed. He’s hung belongings, like safe keepings, around his belt. Jewelry, animal paws, as if decorating his belt with trophies, they were no doubt from the people he’d probably encountered before. 

 

And then, he sees something tied around his belt that forces a memory to surface.

 

_ “Hey, buddy, wake up.” A voice calls softly, gingerly pulling Keith out of his slumber. He’d been sleeping soundly in Shiro’s bed, something he’d often do the days that Shiro would be gone, on the nights he missed him most.  _

 

_ Keith’s eyes are swollen with sleep, his hair tousled and his joints aching. He cracks an eye open and immediately sits up when he notices Shiro sitting next to him.  _

 

_ “Shiro!” He exclaims, throwing his arms around him in relief. It was one of his longer trips, he’d been gone for two weeks.  _

 

_ Shiro returns the embrace, and after pulling back he grabs his backpack from where he’d set it down at the foot of the bed. “I brought you something.” He says, and Keith feels the bubbling excitement rumble in his chest.  _

 

_ Shiro would always bring things to him, would never hesitate to talk about his journeys and the people he’d met. Keith made him promise he’d take him on one of his excursions, to which Shiro would only laugh and say “yeah, when you’re old enough.” _

 

_ “What is it?” He asks, taking immediate interest in the dangling object  Shiro holds over his head. It’s a wooden circle with caramel rope wrapped between its opening, forming a netlike surface that oddly resembled a trampoline. Seven blue and red jewels shaped like elephants dangle from it, making tiny tinkling sounds like wind chimes. _

 

_ “It’s a dream catcher. It’s supposed to catch your bad dreams so you won’t have any.” Shiro hands it to him.  _

 

_ Keith holds the superstitious object over his finger, lets it dangle between his eyes. He looks at him, dark grey eyes glistening. “Will it keep your bad dreams away?” _

 

_ Shiro watches him for a moment, just barely enough to breathe before he smiles. “It sure will.” _

 

_ On the night that Keith had been particularly insistent, the night that Shiro would never return, he’d insisted that Shiro take the dream catcher with him.  _

 

_ “Why don’t you just keep it here?” _

 

_ Keith only shrugs, “I get the feeling you’ll probably have a bad dream this time around.” _

 

_ “And why’s that?” _

 

_ Keith looks at him over his shoulder, where he’s standing over the sink with a dirty dish in his hand. “I feel like you’re going away for a long time.” _

 

He hadn’t felt the movements of his body while he floated in the memory, but when Keith finally comes to he’s holding Lance’s gun in his hand from where he pulled it out of the holster around his hips. The large man had toppled over across the fence, a bullet hole in his head.

 

“Keith! Oh my god- oh my god.” Hunk hyperventilates

 

“He killed him!” Pidge shouts hysterically, unable to look from the crumpled body on the ground.

 

“What the  _ fuck  _ was that Keith?!!” Lance shouts, he's the only one who seems to be thinking clearly. He shoves Keith against the fence hard, the playfulness long gone. “What the fuck was that?! You killed him!” 

 

Keith doesn't answer, he doesn't even look at Lance. He looks beyond the streets, beyond the buildings across the streets, he looks at nothing. 

 

“He was going to kill her. He was going to-”

 

“ _ We _ don't  _ kill the living.”  _ Lance grits the last part of the sentence between his teeth.

 

“Then what was that?” Keith bites, finally looking at Lance. Lance has the fire of a thousand blue suns in his eyes, as if Keith had done something far worse than killing a man. “He was going to kill her.” 

 

“ _ He  _ was going to kill her, not  _ us. _ ” Lance backs up from Keith, running a shaking hand over his hair. “You couldn’t kill the zombie at the police station, but you killed  _ him _ ?!”

 

Keith doesn’t respond.

 

“Guys.” Pidge calls, and their attention turns to the vacant circle of blood on the grass, where only the dead man lays, eyes empty . “She ran away. She’s gone.”

 

“We have to leave.” Hunk says, looking at the sky as it transitions from grey to black.

 

Pidge stops him, “We can’t just leave him there. The bullet-” Pidge breathes deeply, “The bullet didn’t hit his brain stem.

 

Lance runs an anxious hand over his hair and face, “God  _ dammit!”  _ He shouts, looking between the dead body and Keith. He shoves Keith again and pulls a knife from the small of his back. “ _ You  _ are going to do it. You’re gonna walk up to it, and  _ kill it. _ Do you understand?”

 

Keith stares at him, and jerks the knife out of Lance’s hand. He crosses the fence, stalking over to the sack of flesh on the grass. The dreamcatcher is just under his big belly,  and Keith kicks him over to confirm if it was in fact the one that Shiro took before he left. 

 

Blue and red elephant jewels hang from the dreamcatchers circular body, and again, Keith is hit with a wave of grief and rage. He hadn’t thought to capture him, hadn’t tried to wait and ask him where Shiro was. He was only looking at the dreamcatcher. And now, it was all he really had. 

 

There’s an army tag around the man’s thick neck, Keith bends over to inspect it. There’s a series of identification numbers, a blood type and a name.

 

_ Myzax _

 

Keith doesn’t recall the name, but it nonetheless sends ominous chills down his spine. Keith tears the dreamcatcher from the loop of his belt and stands to look at him. 

 

The dead military soldier is quickly discoloring, glassy eyes open and facing the sky. There’s a hole in his forehead where darkening blood oozes out slowly, travelling over his bald head and dripping onto the grass. His mouth hangs open, the edges of it also leaking red and staining his teeth. 

 

Keith holds the knife over his throat, blocks out every sound, every color, thinks of Shiro, and drives the knife through his esophagus until he feels it penetrate the soil underneath the body. He pulls it out, wipes the blood on the dead man’s green shirt and returns the knife to its strapping. 

 

Pidge’s scream tears through the dead silence, and Keith turns around quickly  to see that they’re all looking at the same direction. He turns his head out toward the street, and sees a huge horde of zombies walking through the street. 

 

“They heard the gunshot, they’re running straight towards the sound.” Lance says, and Keith is running across the yard to jump over the fence. 

 

“The crawlers have started to move south. We have to go, we have to go  _ now.”  _

 

Keith barely makes it to the fence when he sees the panic settled over the group, and makes a bid decision:

 

“Go ahead without me, get out and wait. If I don’t make it by the time the  _ first  _ crawler makes it through the city, you leave.” 

 

The moaning and groaning is just across the street. Keith uses every ounce of his power to push his legs forward, but climbing the fence had taken too much time. Too many seconds between the quick shuffling steps of the zombies and his groups fading backs. His shirt catches on the top of the fence and he tears away from it, feeling the cloth rip from the force. 

 

He runs with all his might toward the rest of the group. They’re within a sprinting distance, two blocks across the police station. But crawlers begin to show up from the corner of the next street, cutting him off from the group. There’s only one street to escape to, and Keith takes a left turn instead of following straight ahead where Lance, Pidge and Hunk are already leaving the city boundaries. 

 

More and more undead come pouring out of seemingly nowhere, proving that the migration had struck the city again. Keith only has his knives and sword to fend the horde off, and with the looks of having been trapped in a street, he might just have to fight his way out.

 

Crawlers pour into the street from both sides, inevitably smelling the pulsating flesh of Keith’s body. They move with their heads bobbing up in the air, smelling, searching, hungry. Keith takes up his sword,

 

_ “Your first kill. It’s never easy.”  _

 

Keith is filled with determination to survive, his will carried out by the hope that Shiro escaped the grips of the evil man he’d killed earlier. He killed a living person in a crazed state, it won’t be any harder to kill a few dead ones if it meant getting out of this shithole. 

 

The first one comes at him, throws it’s decaying body toward him with it’s rotten mouth hanging open. Keith easily dodges the uncoordinated movement and brings his blade down on the exposed neck of the undead. Brown blood coats his black blade, thick and disgusting, the smell of death permeating the air. 

 

There are more coming toward him, and the more his blade drives into the leathery grey flesh, the less he feels it. Eventually, a swarm begins to form around him, and things are looking very grim for him at the street exits begin to fade behind a mass of walking dead bodies. 

 

_ “You gonna be alright while I get back?” Shiro asks. _

 

_ “You always ask me that. When are you going to start telling me that you’ll be back instead of asking me if I’m gonna be okay?” _

 

_ Shiro laughs, “I just worry.”  _

_ Keith shakes his head, “Well don’t. You’ve done it a million times already, just leave a bag of chips for the week and I’ll be fine. Now say it: I’ll be back.” _

 

_ Shiro repeats after him, “I’ll be back.” _

 

_ Keith nods, arms crossed. “There you go. Now get outta here, I’ll be waiting.” _

 

_ I’ll be back. _

 

_ I’ll be back. _

 

_ (Welcome back.) _


	8. to the hills

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the one where keith finally breaks

“Hey, hey! Wait- hold on!” Pidge is struggling to keep up with Lance and Hunk as they run back to the RV parked in the highway. “I said  _ wait  _ goddammit!” they shout at the top of their lungs once they’ve cleared the city. 

 

Lance leans forward onto his knees, breathing hard. “What is it?”

 

“We’re just going to-” Pidge gestures back to the city, out of breath, “Leave him there? We aren’t gonna go back? Did you see how many crawlers cornered him back there?”

 

Hunk looks at Pidge, stricken, “There’s nothing we can do from here, Pidge.”

  
  
“You call yourself an  _ engineer  _ with that mentality? There’s  _ always  _ a solution, Hunk! You know this as good as I do. We have to go back. We have to-”

 

“Pidge!” Lance yells, effectively shutting Pidge up. “What are our options? Do you know how to fight close combat with more than one of those things? Do you have any idea what the hell can happen to us?”

 

“What’s happening to  _ him _ right now?! Are you both serious?!”

 

“There’s nothing we can do!” Hunk says, his voice firm. “The shots are too loud. And at this point, it’s too late for him. We can’t help him.”

 

“We have to go, they’re starting to leak out of the city.” Lance says, opening the beige and orange striped RV and crawling into the driver's seat. “Get in.”

 

“No?  _ No. _ ” Pidge turns their body towards the city, as if being sucked in by it. “We  _ can’t  _ leave him there. He helped us- he was  _ part  _ of us.”

 

“Pidge.” Lance warns. Hunk takes a step forward towards Pidge and Pidge simultaneously takes a step back.

  
  
“This isn’t right.”

 

“Suppose we do go back, Pidge.” Hunk says, “We go back with our weapons, but then what? The shots can be heard. They’ll get us too.”

 

“We have to leave.” Lance says, and Pidge shakes their head stubbornly. 

 

“Keith got us out of a horde too. Keith- Keith is looking for someone too.”

 

“Pidge-”

 

“I’m  _ not  _ leaving without him.” Pidge grits, and turns back to the city. “I’ll figure something out, I’ll get him out of there.”

 

Pidge takes a total of ten steps from the RV before two pairs of arms wrap around them and lift them from the ground, wrestling them into the RV. “What are you doing?! Let me go! Don’t you dare do this Hunk!  _ Hunk! _ ”

 

“I’m sorry Pidge, I can’t risk you out there.”

 

Pidge thrashes around, fighting against Lance’s hands that are wrapped around their ankles. They manage to wriggle a foot out from Lance’s grip and sock him right on the chin with an oddly satisfying crack. He deserved that, he was being an asshole right now. They both were. “You don’t understand! We can set off car alarms! We can drive to him! Why aren’t you acting on it?!  _ What’s wrong with you?! _ ”

 

The RV door slams shut in front of Pidge and Hunk doesn’t let go of them until Lance has started the vehicle and driven away. The entire way, Pidge didn’t stop fighting until they passed out from exhaustion.

 

\---

 

Keith can’t tell if the blood that's covering him from his face to his toes is his, but he's familiar with the wretched stench coming from it that chokes the air out of his lungs and settles deep in the pit of his stomach as if he’d swallowed a mountain. His eyes are barely open as he drags his feet across the asphalt, looking very ironically like the crawlers that shuffle around by him. Dehydrated and with little hope, he collapses on the floor, becoming still as darkness swallows him into its inviting arms.

 

He wakes up feeling like he'd only blinked, but the dark blue night dancing with bright stars indicated he'd passed out hours ago. The waxing gibbous moon offers the only light in the entire city, but the broken glass littered across every inch of the ground reflects a white light back to the sky, allowing Keith to see as clear as if it were noon. He's thirsty and weak, his dirty lips are chapped and bleeding, but he can hardly feel them past the stinging on his cheek where glass clings to his skin, sprouting forth the little blood he has left in his system. Running away from a group of crawlers proved to be a tedious feat, if his wounds and weakened state are anything to go by.

 

Keith sees the headlights of a pick up truck before he hears the deep rumble of an aged engine. Because he lacks proper water and oxygen, his brain seems to register his senses at different times, and so when he barely manages to dodge the bat that swings for his head as the truck reels by, it wasn't because he was aware of being targeted, but rather because he took a step forward and his knees gave out on him just in time for the bat to whisk perilously over his head. 

 

The person who aimed at his head bangs on the top of the pick up truck. “Stop the truck! He's alive!” 

 

Keith looks up, and once again finds the energy to stagger onto his feet. With the way he looks right now, he could be easily mistaken for a crawler. The pick up truck is a deep green color, scratched and dirtied from age and over usage. Wooden bars were hand made and adjusted to create a cage like fence around the back, possibly to avoid being grabbed by a crawler. The back lights flash red and the tires squeal in feverish protest as the truck reverses towards him. A person he can't quite make out because the clouds have covered the moon jumps out of the truck and walks cautiously towards him, bat high in his hands. 

 

“If you're alive, say something.” 

 

Keith remains silent, squinting and leaning forward, why does that person look so familiar? 

 

The clouds move ever so sluggishly to unveil the nearly full moon, and the white light spills over them once again, slowly traveling in a straight line towards them. The darkness is fading, and when the light reaches the person holding the bat, Keith finally understands why the person looked so familiar. In the delicate pale light of the moon, Keith sees the glint of thinly framed round glasses, and behind them are a pair of glowing honey irises, pupils dilated in concentration and the absolute will to live, endlessly searching. 

 

“Pidge?” He asks hoarsely, the name felt like knives tearing through his throat. He coughs, loud and painful bouts sear through his entire body and his chest suddenly feels hollow and empty. 

 

The person drops their bat, seeming to recognize the name immediately as it had left Keith’s lips. Keith falls forward, fully expecting to meet the ground but the person propels forward to catch him. Keith’s head is being cradled by soft arms, and he feels thin knees digging into his back from where his savior is trying his best to keep him from meeting the ground. 

 

Keith's ears are ringing white noise into his senses, and his eyes see everything as if he were opening them underwater. He can hardly hear the words being said to him, can only see the blurry outline of a moving mouth directed toward him. Once again the murky, puddle like sensation that comes before fainting begins to wash over him. In the tiny moment his senses have to register the world around him, he sees the shadows of other people hovering over him and blocking out the light. 

 

“He's dehydrated, we need to get him i…” the voices trail off as the darkness collapses into him again. 

 

Consciousness beckons his eyes to open again. He's lost all sense of time and direction as a beaming sun, yellow and bright as a desert noon, caresses the skin of his face. Keith thinks he's back home as the sky disappears into a soft white blue background behind the blinding sun. His face stings a familiar burn, the kind he felt for days after Shiro had first brought him back to the desert. 

 

Keith pictures him, tanned skin of his face, the deep auburn of his eyes like the hills of mars. The patch of white hair he insists makes him look at least ten years older than he really is. The broad build of his shoulders, the pearly white smile never faltering, never unkind. 

 

His body involuntarily rocks violently, and suddenly he comes careening back to a reality where he's being jostled in the back of a pickup truck. He sits up too quickly, hissing in pain as blood rushes to his head and makes his brain feel like it's pulsating along with his thundering heartbeat. The smoldering stench that wafts from him hits him with a wave of nausea.

 

“Welcome back, dead boy.” A deep voice calls from the corner of the pickup truck. Keith looks up and sees a man sitting with his knees up, back pressed to the hand built wooden fence encasing the body of the green truck. “I was sure we'd been carrying a corpse, might've just put a bullet through your head if the smarty pants driver hadn't stopped me.” 

 

Keith is about to say something but is stopped by the sandpaper feel of his throat, his coughs rattle his entire body and come from within his chest. He feels his throat give in to the dryness and small drops of blood render themselves from his mouth. 

 

The man sitting towards a corner reaches for the small window and pulls it open “Yo, medicine boy, the kids awake, but he's coughing blood.” 

 

A soft voice answers, there's kindness engraved into their genetics, but there's a hardness to his tone that was undoubtedly sprouted from the seed of experience in this post apocalyptic world. “He's severely dehydrated, give him water.”

 

The man outside grunts in response, slamming the window shut and shuffling over to the series of canteens stacked to the far side of the truck. He grabs one and tosses it to Keith. “Drink up, or else you'll really be a dead boy.” 

 

Keith is absolutely sure that the water in the canteen is holy. He chugs most of the water from the canteen, and lets some of it fall into his face. 

 

The man hisses in offense “Hey hey hey! That water is precious, don't use it all up on your dirty face!”

 

Keith drinks the rest of the canteen, clearing his throat only after he's quenched his thirst. “Sorry.” He says, but his voice is coarse like the old strings of a violin. 

 

“Don't know where you came from to use water like that, but it must've been damn good.” He takes the canteen from Keith and tosses it back to the pile. Looking at him now, the man is dark skinned, though Keith can't tell if it's his natural color of skin or if it's a result of days in the sun without sun protection. He's wearing a dark vest that covers him up to his shoulder blades and half of his midsection, his hair is the color of dandelions, falling over his eyes. “What's your name, dead boy? Or do you like that name? I could get used to calling you that.” 

 

Keith isn't really in the mood for humor, but there's a small part of him that is oddly relieved at it, seeing that for the past few weeks there really hasn't been anything worth laughing at. “I'm Keith, I got separated from my group.” 

 

“That's how all the stories go.” The man says, letting his legs fall into a cross cross “Names Rolo. I was just a farm machinery mechanic before this happened, this,  _ thing _ . I came from the countryside, never even realized there was an apocalypse going on until I saw lots of barns burning in bright red flames, and dead people with rotting skin walking around like, well, zombies.” 

 

“I found Nyma, the girl in the passenger's seat, she was the last survivor of her family from her farmhouse. It was us two for a while before-” Rolo pauses, for the tiniest fraction of a second he hesitates, “We ran into that guy, the driver. He was a lot like you, mess of blood that wasn't his own, but he had been carrying lots of medical supplies, pounds of it in a big ol’ army sack. He was a medic back in the army, and some kinda fancy scientist, or so he says. We’re driving southeast now, till we hit somethin’ that looks like home.” 

 

The truck slows to a screeching stop from the wear and tear of the brakes within it, and the driver steps out, “Rolo, I think it's your turn to drive. I've gotten us all the way out here, and I need to talk to him about something.” 

 

Keith doesn't have the energy to crawl over to the other side to see who it is talking to Rolo, but the dark skinned mechanic is thankful for getting a turn to drive. He jumps out of the wooden fence and leaps into the driver’s seat. The truck coughs much like Keith before it sputters to life. The back of the truck falls open.

 

The air leaves Keith's lungs. His heart leaps at the familiarity of the face in front of him. The boy climbs the truck and shuts the compartment, banging the truck twice to signal that they're ready to move. 

 

They're on the road and Keith can't take his eyes off him. 

 

“Judging by the look on your face, I take it you've seen me before, or alike somehow.” The boy crawls in front of Keith and sits right across from him, propping his right arm up on his right knee.

 

“I- You’re- you-” Keith’s brain is having trouble formulating a proper thought. It was like he was staring straight into Pidge’s eyes, only the person right in front of him wasn’t Pidge but-

 

“My name is Matthew. Matthew Holt.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when ur 8 chapters in and the bass barely drops. but oh nooooo so much shit is going onnnnn


	9. ghosts under my skin

The engine of the old green truck hums low in the heat of the mid afternoon. The air that thrashes across the bars of the wooden fence built over its body snaps with a whipping sound in Keith’s eardrums. His hair is flying around him, hovering over his forehead and oscillating violently around his face.  


Pidge’s brother is sitting right in front of him, sun colored tresses tied back into a low ponytail at the back of his neck. Pidge is almost a spitting image of Matt, only the shape of their eyes and the lack of freckles across his nose are able to distinguish them apart from each other. Keith has been stunned to silence, can’t even seem to formulate a proper question to ask, can’t think of anything really, just dead, empty shock.

“Back there,” Matt begins bluntly, breaking the silence like cutting through paper with a dull knife, “You called me Pidge. That means you must've met my sister.”

Keith manages to nod vacantly, feeling everything on his skin in slow motion. His odd jet lag soon pulls out of him like a vacuum, and his legs give him enough power for him to lean over the wooden railing and hurl every ounce of bile sloshing around in his stomach.

Matt is behind him, hands gripping his shoulders to hold him steady. Keith collapses with his back to the metal wall of the truck, holding his stomach in hopes of calming the painful cramps that desecrate it.

“Were you wounded by the crawlers in the city?” Matt asks, beginning to inspect Keith for any bites or scratches.

Keith shakes his head, “No I- I killed them.”

Matt instructs him to lay down, checking every nook and cranny of Keith’s exposed skin. “If the flesh wound is deep enough, it would function the exact same way as any bite.” He confirms that there is only layers of dry blood on his skin and clothes, no apparent wounds. “Your body is most likely catching up with the past few hours, you should be feeling better by the end of tomorrow.”

Keith nods, his exhaustion evident in his dark eyes. Matt scoots over to the small windows of the pick up truck and slides the middle open. “Rolo, we might need to make an early stop. He needs a shower and some new clothes.”

“Alright, Nyma is hungry anyway. Might as well grab a  _ bite _ too.” Nyma shakes her head at his ridiculous pun.

Matt shuts the window, and sits by Keith once again. “You're exhausted right now, so I won't ask you any serious questions, but I expect you to have enough energy to have a long talk with me after you clean yourself up.”

Keith nods, and lets his head fall back onto the black plastic of the truck bed, watching the clouds change shape in the blue sky.

They’re lucky to have Rolo with them, as he was experienced and had a keen eye for practical mechanical things. Unlike Matt, who was more experienced with breaking complex systems down and learning how they function, Rolo knew the kind of mechanics that had to deal with everyday living.

They stopped at a quaint, two story house with nothing too special looking about it. It was framed with wood, pastel pink paint chipping off with brittle age, it was obvious that the house was from the older days when the city had been a vast farming land. They all get out of the truck, Keith leaning heavily on Matt, and stop just outside of the house.

“Um, Rolo-” Matt begins, but is cut off before he could finish his question.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Rolo waves him off, “Little pink house looks like it’s got nothin’ to its name. But look again, you see that well right there?” Rolo points to the recently cut yard where a cylinder of grey stones poke out from the Earth, a sheet of dark plywood covering it. “That right there, means the house runs on its own water. And what’s a well useful for if it ain’t got pumps around it?”

“It’s got a full filtration system!” Matt answers with glee. “It’s settled then, we’ll stay here until Keith gets better.”

There’s no objections as the group walks inside the house.

There’s nobody home. All the other houses they’d been to had family-turned-zombie’s inside, some families had committed suicide and tainted the walls with their blood. Other houses had been burned to the ground after a couple had set fire to themselves. But there was nothing in this house, not a single drop of blood, just family pictures sitting over the fireplace collecting dust. The stillness of this house, as if having stopped time, was almost more eerie than those that had been affected by the apocalypse.

Rolo grabs a picture of the family,  “Whoever lived here sure as hell didn't’ know they had their own running water, else they would’ve never left. Damn idiots.”

Nyma snatches the picture from Rolo and puts it back, “Show some respect, Rolo. If they’re dead, they’ll be coming after  _ you _ first.”

Rolo hums and scratches the back of his head, “You know I don’t believe in that stuff Nyma, besides, it’s way better for ghosts to chase you than the undead.” He makes a clawing motion towards her with his hands.

Nyma shakes her head at him for the millionth time that day and looks over to Matt and Keith, who are standing at the foot of the stairs. “Rolo and I are gonna go out and check the stores for food. Just in case you don’t see us when you come back down here. It's pretty quiet out here anyway.”

“Okay, I’m gonna help him clean up.” Matt says as he guides Keith upstairs and into the closest room. The room smells stale and miskept, as if it hadn’t been lived in for many years. There’s a bed, a wooden dresser and a couch in the room, and by the style of the room, it’s evident that this was a woman’s room, the curtains were cream in color with delicate patterns. The dresser had pairs of half empty bottles of perfume and some loose jewelry. The bed was neatly done, with two sleeping pillows and four decorative, itchy, golden-laced pillows. Matt helps Keith sit on the duck feather couch to take a breather.

“Alright, I’m sure they’ve got sets of clothes out here, I’ll go look for some. You stay here.” Matt stands and walks out of the room, not shutting the door behind him.

Keith focuses on steadying his breathing, shaking the haze out of his head. He feels as if he’s twisted between fantasy and reality, still not able to grasp the ground beneath him with his feet. Even if he hadn’t sustained any outward wounds from battling  a horde of zombies, he had beaten himself against walls and buildings as he ran away from a lot of them.

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees them. Dead, decaying bodies moving without thought, without any purpose than to eat, kill,  _ eat.  _ Their rotted limbs are outstretched, reaching for his flesh.

Keith only realizes he’d been walking when his knees buckled out from under him and he collapsed just four steps away from the couch.

He hears Matt’s frantic running from across the hallway, “Keith?! What were you doing?!” He gathers the fallen boy up in his arms, fresh clothes hooked over his right shoulder. “Let me help you to the bathroom.”

Matt drops the white toilet cover over the seat and plants Keith on it, kneeling down and helping him take his bloody boots off. He strips Keith out of his clothes, and Keith feels like layers of his own skin are being peeled off. He can't find the will to move, like he's frozen in time. Matt is familiar with this kind of lingering shock, the nightmares that will torment this boy after it settles are probably going to make him an insomniac too.

"You can.. Keep those on if you want. I don’t know how comfortable you are with this, but it looks like you’ll need help bathing too.”

Keith doesn’t say anything, and Matt takes it as a silent agreement as he leans over the tub and turns the hot water on.  He helps Keith into the tub and gathers the soiled clothes in his arms to take it out, noticing the white leather of his jacket littered with teeth marks that were unable to tear through. This kid got really lucky.

“I’ll throw these out.” He says as he begins to walk out of the bathroom, “You can wear the clothes I brought.”

It’s the first time Keith says anything since they were on the road. “Don’t. Don’t throw them out.”

Matt stays silent, “I’ll just take them downstairs then, I’ll be right back.”

Keith stares at the water he’s currently sitting in. It crawls upwards on him as the tub fills, washing the dry blood off his tainted skin. Slowly, it cohesively travels upwards from his hips, up to his abdomen. He sees his toes under the quickly browning water, feels the heat of it on his chest. He sinks down into the water, scooting forward with ease until the water is up to his neck. The light hovering over him glows a dim yellow, he closes his eyes, and sinks into the tub. A deep calmness settles over him as the water encases his body and face, he’s surrounded by warmth and soft light. Images of Shiro dance behind his eyelids as his body melts into a comfortable numbness, where he feels like he doesn't exist in any place but his memory.

Hands grab his shoulders and jerk him out of the water, into the cold harsh reality of now. “Goddammit!” Matt hisses, “What the hell is wrong with you?! You need to stop this right now! And drowning?! Really?! I can’t let you out of my sight for a single second, you’re like an old man!”

“I wasn’t.” Keith says, looking away from Matt and toward the smooth, marble pastel tile wall of the shower. “The water felt nice.”

Matt unplugs the hole and lets the dirty water flush out. “The water is filthy. Can I turn around for some soap and you not try to kill yourself this time, can I do that?”

“You talk too much.” Keith says, and Matt fumes as he scrubs Keith down to his toes and washes his hair three times over to fully cleanse him. It was very obvious that he had been some kind of medic, at the very least a nurse, because Matt paid attention to every detail when it came to Keith’s care, even though they’d just met. It was like he had become very familiar with adjusting to the preferences of strangers, it was as if it were Matt’s second nature.

The bath helped immensely. Keith was able to dress himself in the shirt and jeans Matt had brought him. He was able to stand on his own, and walked the steps from the bathroom to his room. Matt was behind him, placing his hands on the small of his back and bending backwards, groaning in pain. “Man, my back is killing me.”

Keith grabs onto the supports of the bed to steady himself after wobbling. He sits on the edge of the bed and waits, mind blank from the events that had taken place just hours before they found him. When Matt doesn’t say anything, he asks, “Don't you have questions?”

“I can tell you’re not ready to talk.” Matt says, closing the curtains to block the moonlight from coming in.

Keith is quiet. Downstairs, the front door rattles open, Rolo and Nyma’s voice wafting up the stairs. Matt turns to look at Keith, “I’ll bring you something to eat. Get some rest, and we’ll worry about all this in the morning.”

If Keith was going to answer, Matt didn't stay around long enough to hear him. Keith lays back on the bed, staring up into the ceiling. He feels the thin thread of dread trace the outlines of his hands, seeping into his skin like plant roots sucking water from the ground. It teases him, breathes into his ear and makes chills rise on his skin. Keith exhales, ignoring the ominous feeling and deciding to close his eyes.

They come for him again. Dragging their bruised limbs and scraping their exposed bones against the pavement. Their snarls are inhumane; a horrifying, scratching sound from dry lungs and decayed throats. The crawlers have lost most of their faces to the unforgiving force of decomposition, gums receding until all that’s left is a skinless jaw, open and hungry. They swarm his memory, snarling and moving without any end.

Keith gasps awake when Matt knocks on the doorway, sitting up immediately with a heaving chest and a film of cold sweat over his forehead.

“Keith, is everything okay?” Matt asks when he notices how shaken Keith is.

Keith nods, not looking at him. “Bad dream.”

Matt sets the food on the nightstand next to the bed and plops down on the couch with a sigh, his vision directed at the ceiling. “You can never get used to it, can you?”

The crawlers snarl in his subconscious, Keith swallows them back. “It all fades eventually.”

They sit in shared silence. Keith moves to lay down properly over the covers, his skin cold and clammy. The crawlers never leave him, their dead eyes roaming aimlessly across his face. He wonders if this is what Shiro felt, in the growing distance between them, was he also plagued by the faces of these awful creatures? It was hard to imagine that they'd once been human beings.

“What was Shiro like when you met him?” It was a question that was asked before it was properly thought out. Matt was right, Keith didn't feel like talking at all, but he was reminded of the time that Pidge had confessed their brothers connection to Shiro, and in given time it was all he could think about, it was keeping him awake.

With his back turned to Matt, he hears Matt’s head lift off the edge of the couch, feels his stare burning holes into his back. He knows that Matt is itching to ask, but he can't bring himself to indulge him in the life that Shiro lived after the army.

Matt’s head falls back against the couch, “He was the most humane person I’d ever met.”

Keith can agree to that.

Matt talks about him in past tense, like reliving a distant memory through his lips. Shiro had been a war hero, he’d saved lives and always put himself in the battlefield first. He was brave, he was caring and kind and he was the most beautiful human being Matthew had ever laid his eyes on.

“Were you ever romantically involved with him?” Keith asks, his voice hoarse.

“Shiro, he never knew how to turn someone down.” Matt laughs quietly as he leans forward and rests his head in his arms. “Looking back it’s clear as day he only gave me a chance out of pity, I was far from being his ideal type.”

“No,” Keith says, finding his voice again, he shakes his head in the dark even though he knows Matt can’t see it. “Shiro wouldn’t put anyone through a pain like unrequited love. He’s honest, and if he dated you, it’s because he really did like you.”

Talking about Shiro like this has somewhat calmed Keith. There’s no longer the incessant snarling of crawlers and their ugly skins on the back of his mind, his brain has quieted down and stopped pestering him, and now, he can properly form a memory and string together a thought. He sits up in the dark, leans over the nightstand and turns the lamp on.

 

Keith’s silver eyes glisten in the moon and are dead set on Matt’s. He scoots to the edge of the bed, facing him, 

 

“I’m ready to talk.”

 

Matt purses his lips.  


End file.
